TEACHING  IN  SCHOOL 


! 


COLLEGE 


WILLIAM  LYON  PHELPS 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

)r. Ernest    Carroll  Moor< 


TEACHING 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


TEACHING 


IN  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 


BY 

WILLIAM   LYON   PHELPS 
(M.A.  HARVARD,  PH.D.  YALE) 

FORMERLY  INSTRUCTOR  AT  WESTMINSTER  SCHOOL;    FORMERLY 
INSTRUCTOR  IN   ENGLISH    AT   HARVARD;    LAMPSON   PRO- 
FESSOR OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  AT  YALE;    MEMBER 
OF  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  ARTS  AND 
LETTERS 


Nefo 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1912 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1912, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  August,  191*. 


Xortacoto  I9resa 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


>=> 


Education 

Library 

L/B 


THIS   BOOK 

IS  RESPECTFULLY  DEDICATED 

TO 
MY  COLLEAGUES  IN  THE  GOOD  CAUSE 

Vj  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL  TEACHERS 

OF  CONNECTICUT 


193914 


Suppose  her  some  poor  keeper  of  a  school 
Whose  business  is  to  sit  thro'  summer  months 
And  dole  out  children  leave  to  go  and  play, 
Herself  superior  to  such  lightness  —  she 
In  the  arm-chair's  state  and  pedagogic  pomp  — 
To  the  life,  the  laughter,  sun  and  youth  outside. 

—  IN  A  BALCONY. 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  not  so  egotistically  cocksure 
as  the  title  would  seem  to  imply.  Quite 
the  contrary.  My  object  is  not  to  lay 
down  the  law  for  all  teachers,  but  to  give 
some  hints  based  on  personal  experience, 
both  from  pew  and  pulpit ;  for  I  sat  twenty 
years  in  front  of  the  desk,  and  twenty 
years  behind  it.  My  book  is  perhaps  con- 
fessional rather  than  hortatory;  for  that 
very  reason  it  will  irritate  some,  and  help 
others.  But  I  think  we  often  learn  more 
from  a  man's  confessions  than  from  his  ser- 
mons. Concrete  facts  and  definite  sugges- 
tions stick  tighter  in  the  mind  than  abstract 
ideas  and  loud  exhortation ;  just  as  a  piece 
of  bread  is  more  valuable  to  a  hungry  man 
than  the  sentiment  of  enthusiasm  for  hu- 
manity, unaccompanied  by  specific  applica- 

ix 


x  Preface 

tion.     At  all  events,  I  make  no  apology  for 
the  personal  tone  of  this  work. 

"  God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so, 
Lending  our  minds  out." 

W.  L.  P. 

FLORENCE, 
Tuesday,  2  April,  1912. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY         i 

SCHOOL-TEACHING  AND  DISCIPLINE         .        .  12 

PRIVATE  SCHOOL-TEACHING  AND  SCHOLARSHIP  41 
IMAGINATION  IN  TEACHING     .        .        .        .51 

THE  EFFICIENCY  OF  COLLEGE  TEACHING       .  67 

EDUCATION  AND  INSTRUCTION         ...  94 

ENGLISH  COMPOSITION 117 

ENGLISH  PRONUNCIATION        ....  130 

TEACHING  ENGLISH  LITERATURE    .        .        .  137 

THE  MORAL  ASPECT  OF  TEACHING        .        .  171 


TEACHING  IN  SCHOOL  AND 
COLLEGE 


INTRODUCTORY 

I  DO  not  know  that  I  could  make  entirely 
clear  to  an  outsider  the  pleasure  I  have 
in  teaching.  I  had  rather  earn  my  living  by 
teaching  than  in  any  other  way.  In  my 
mind,  teaching  is  not  merely  a  life-work, 
a  profession,  an  occupation,  a  struggle :  it 
is  a  passion.  I  love  to  teach.  I  love  to 
teach  as  a  painter  loves  to  paint,  as  a  musi- 
cian loves  to  play,  as  a  singer  loves  to  sing, 
as  a  strong  man  rejoices  to  run  a  race. 
Teaching  is  an  art  —  an  art  so  great  and  so 
difficult  to  master  that  a  man  or  a  woman 
can  spend  a  long  life  at  it,  without  realising 
much  more  than  his  limitations  and  mis- 
takes, and  his  distance  from  the  ideal.  But 


2     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

the  main  aim  of  my  happy  days  has  been 
to  become  a  good  teacher,  just  as  every 
architect  wishes  to  be  a  good  architect,  and 
every  professional  poet  strives  toward  per- 
fection. For  the  chief  difference  between 
the  ambition  of  an  artist  and  the  ambition 
of  a  money-maker  —  both  natural  and  hon- 
ourable ambitions  —  is  that  the  money- 
maker is  after  the  practical  reward  of  his 
toil,  while  the  artist  wants  the  inner  satis- 
faction that  accompanies  mastery. 

Teaching  is  an  art,  not  a  science :  and  I 
may  as  well  confess  at  the  start  that  I  know 
nothing  whatever  of  the  science  of  pedagogy. 
I  am  unable,  therefore,  to  use  technical  terms, 
as  I  am  not  sure  what  they  mean.  I  know 
a  great  many  children,  boys  and  girls, 
young  men  and  maidens :  but  I  have  never 
studied  the  "psychology  of  the  child,"  and 
have  never  attempted  to  find  the  way  to 
a  boy's  heart  by  a  scientific  formula.  The 
science  of  pedagogy  is  to-day  a  recognised 
branch  of  learning,  and  there  are  admirable 
men  and  women  who  seem  to  have  achieved 


Introductory  3 

distinction  in  its  pursuit;  but  I  have  been 
too  busy  teaching  and  studying  my  own 
speciality  —  English  Literature  —  to  give 
any  serious  or  prolonged  attention  to  that 
or  any  other  science.  I  am  not  proud  of 
my  ignorance,  nor  in  the  least  disposed  to 
slur  the  importance  of  fields  of  knowledge 
through  which  I  have  never  passed.  But 
the  study  of  pedagogy,  however  valuable 
or  interesting,  is  not  the  most  essential  part 
of  a  teacher's  intellectual  or  moral  outfit. 
One  might  know  all  about  the  science  of 
pedagogy,  and  yet  be  a  poor  teacher  of  Latin, 
English,  French,  or  Mathematics ;  just  as 
one  might  be  able  to  pass  a  brilliant  exami- 
nation on  the  functions  of  the  brain,  and 
yet  not  be  an  original  or  profound  thinker. 
Perhaps  the  ideal  combination  is  that  sug- 
gested by  Herbert  Spencer  in  Education: 
"Science  will  not  make  an  artist.  But  in- 
nate faculty  alone  will  not  suffice.  Only 
when  Genius  is  married  to  Science  can  the 
highest  results  be  produced."  The  diffi- 
culty is,  that  I,  in  common  with  most 


4      Teaching  in  School  and  College 

teachers  of  literature,  have  neither  genius 
nor  science.  We  are  forced  to  substitute 
sympathy,  humour,  devotion,  and  common- 
sense.  This  book  is  written  to  help  the 
ordinary  teacher,  not  the  inspired  genius ; 
he  is  a  rare  bird,  and  no  pedestrian  can  show 
the  way  of  an  eagle  in  the  air. 

My  attitude  toward  professional  peda- 
gogy is  like  my  attitude  toward  phrenology. 
I  believe  that  a  successful  business  man  can 
tell  more  about  a  stranger's  character  in  one 
interview  than  a  professional  phrenologist 
can  by  feeling  of  the  bumps  on  his  skull. 
The  ablest  professors  of  Education  are 
now  employing  their  time  and  talents  more 
sensibly  than  formerly;  they  are  studying 
and  teaching  the  history  of  education,  and 
they  are  endeavouring  to  connect  school 
and  college  in  a  logically  progressive  way. 

The  teacher  must  be  a  living  sacrifice. 
He  should  be  consumed  with  ambition,  but 
his  ambition  should  be  to  promote  the  wel- 
fare of  others,  rather  than  to  further  his  own 
advancement.  The  great  prizes  of  life  — 


Introductory  5 

wealth  and  fame  —  are  not  for  him,  and 
must  be  resolutely  forgotten  at  the  outset. 
His  aim  is  twofold :  the  enlargement  of 
knowledge  in  his  chosen  field,  and  the  ele- 
vation of  his  pupils.  I  say  he  is  a  living 
sacrifice,  because  he  must  give  up  not  only 
the  lust  of  the  flesh,  the  lust  of  the  eye,  and 
the  pride  of  life,  but  also  what  seems  to  him 
important  work,  when  the  needs  of  his  pupils 
require  it.  The  teacher  must  be  accessible. 
Personal  contact  with  the  student  is  all- 
important.  Every  teacher  in  school  or 
college  should  have  regular  office  hours  out- 
side of  his  lectures  or  recitations,  where  he 
may  be  consulted.  But  he  cannot  stop 
there.  Even  if  interrupted  at  other  times, 
and  when  engaged  in  special  study,  by  the 
visit  of  a  student,  he  should  drop  his  work 
and  see  him  —  except  under  extraordinary 
circumstances,  like  ill  health,  writing  that 
must  be  finished  at  a  certain  hour,  or  some 
real  emergency.  "That  one,  soul  should 
remain  in  ignorance  who  was  capable  of 
knowledge,  that  I  call  a  tragedy.".  We  hear 


6      Teaching  in  School  and  College 

a  great  deal  to-day  about  "original  work," 
"  productive  work,"  but  the  truly  productive 
work  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  is  the  work 
that  produces  results  in  the  mind  and  in  the 
character  of  his  pupils,  and  they  remember 
the  personal  contact,  the  timely  hint,  the 
friendly  attitude,  long  after  they  have  for- 
gotten the  answers  they  studied  for  the 
examination.  Such  men  as  Dean  Briggs  of 
Harvard  and  Dean  Wright  of  Yale  have  been 
productive  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word. 
The  life  of  a  devoted  and  conscientious 
teacher  has  much  hardship,  nervous  strain, 
drudgery,  and  petty  annoyance ;  therefore, 
no  one  should  become  a  teacher  who  does 
not  love  his  art,  and  who  is  not  actuated  by 
a  sincere  desire  to  perform  some  service  in 
the  world.  A  high  purpose  "makes  drudg- 
ery divine."  But  there  are  selfish  compen- 
sations and  rewards  in  the1  teaching  pro- 
fession, just  as  there  are  in  all  others.  Aca- 
demic life  in  school  or  college  is  delightful  to 
men  and  women  of  scholarly  tastes ;  one  is 
removed  from  the  sordid  and  material  side 


Introductory  7 

of  the  struggle,  and  one's  associations  and 
friendships  are  based  on  a  community  of 
intellectual  interest.  One  does  not  dwell  in 
a  daily  atmosphere  of  cloth  and  pork,  and  it 
is  a  blessed  thing  to  be  indifferent  to  the 
stock-market.  I  have  never  read  through 
a  stock  report  or  a  newspaper  column  of 
stock  quotations.  I  do  not  even  understand 
the  meaning  of  such  expressions  as  "pre- 
ferred stock"  or  "debentures."  In  view  of 
my  gross  ignorance  of  these  things,  I  try  to 
refrain  from  too  arrogant  criticism  of  the 
morality  of  business  men  and  politicians, 
who  in  the  dust  and  heat  face  problems  that 
never  come  to  me,  and  of  which  I  really 
know  nothing.  I  heard  a  commercial  travel- 
ler say  that  in  two  weeks  he  had  to  meet  more 
temptations  than  the  man  who  did  his  work 
in  a  chair  faced  in  a  year.  We  teachers 
have,  or  ought  to  have,  peace  of  mind.  I 
took  luncheon  in  a  down-town  merchants' 
club  in  New  York,  and  I  have  not  forgotten 
the  anxious  and  worried  faces  of  the  candi- 
dates for  indigestion.  Then  I  brought  a 


8      Teaching  in  School  and  College 

business  man  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  to 
lunch  at  a  club  in  a  small  university  town 
where  most  of  the  members  were  engaged  in 
daily  work  of  a  non-material  kind.  His 
sole  comment  was,  "How  happy  everyone 
seems  in  this  place  !/'  The  teacher  also  has 
the  summer  vacation,  which  he  spends  in 
study,  in  travel,  or  in  rest  —  at  any  rate  he 
has  the  chance  to  acquire  new  ideas  by  the 
change  from  routine.  Furthermore,  the 
teacher  has,  in  many  instances,  intellec- 
tual freedom  —  a  wonderful  thing.  He  can 
think  and  say  what  he  likes.  The  man  of 
business  must  be  careful  to  say  nothing  that 
will  injure  his  affairs,  or  those  of  his  em- 
ployers ;  the  lawyer  is  naturally  forced  to 
make  his  convictions,  if  possible,  coincide 
with  those  of  his  clients ;  the  politician  is 
eternally  thinking  of  his  constituents,  of 
his  "fences,"  or  of  his  party;  but  in  a  high- 
class  '  university  the  professor  has  a  free 
mind  and  a  free  tongue.  This  is  proved  by 
the  way  teachers  in  the  same  institution 
differ  openly  on  everything  from  God  to  the 


Introductory  9 

tariff.  President  Eliot  told  me  once,  and 
I  think  it  a  fine  saying,  "Prudence  is  not 
an  especially  desirable  virtue  in  a  college 
professor." 

But  all  these  are  selfish  considerations,  put 
in  here  simply  to  make  the  picture  true. 
The  real  compensation  is  in  the  very  hap- 
piness of  teaching,  of  practising  a  great  art 
that  one  loves  with  all  one's  soul.  And  still 
more  satisfactory  is  the  delight  of  having 
permanently  influenced  certain  pupils,  of 
having  made  their  lives  richer,  fuller,  and 
better.  I  sat  in  the  smoking-car  of  the  little 
branch  train  leaving  the  Grand  Canyon  in 
Arizona.  The  regular  fireman  of  the  loco- 
motive had  a  day  off,  and  he  came  and  sat 
with  me.  I  said  to  him,  "This  has  been  a 
new  experience  for  me,  this  Canyon ;  it 
is  the  most  wonderful  thing  I  ever  saw. 
Does  it  affect  you  the  same  way  ?  Of  course 
you  see  it  every  day.  Does  it  seem  won- 
derful to  you  ?  or  is  it  just  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  the  day's  run?"  He 
replied,  "Do  you  want  to  know  what  I 


io     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

think  of  it  ?"  and  then  he  quoted  word  for 
word  the  whole  of  Bryant's  Thanatopsis. 
Now  I  suppose  some  poor,  underpaid  school- 
mistress had  taught  the  boy  that  poem,  and 
this  was  her  reward.  Can  one  ask  for  any- 
thing better  ?  Active  gratitude  and  friend- 
ship on  the  part  of  the  pupil  toward  the 
teacher  are  most  encouraging  and  gratify- 
ing; but  often  where  there  is  no  display  of 
feeling,  and  no  sign  of  recognition,  the  real 
work  has  been  done,  and  done  with  per- 
manent results.  And  so  long  as  the  pupils 
live,  the  teacher  is  not  forgotten.  I  re- 
member every  teacher  I  ever  had.  Some  I 
recall  with  gratitude  and  reverence,  some 
with  cordial  dislike,  some  almost  with  pity ; 
but  I  have  forgotten  none. 

There  never  has  been  in  the  world's  his- 
tory a  period  when  it  was  more  worth  while 
to  be  a  teacher  than  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury ;  for  there  was  never  an  age  when  such 
vast  multitudes  were  eager  for  an  education, 
or  when  the  necessity  of  a  liberal  education 


Introductory  1 1 

was  so  generally  recognised.  The  astound- 
ing growth  of  institutions  like  the  Corre- 
spondence Schools  has  surprised  even  their 
most  optimistic  promoters.  It  would  seem 
as  though  the  whole  world  were  trying  to 
lift  itself  to  a  higher  plane  of  thought.  And 
to  those  of  us  who  teach  literature,  it  is 
pleasant  to  remember,  that,  while  trash  sells 
by  the  thousand,  reprints  of  standard  works 
sell  by  the  million.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
be  a  teacher  in  these  present  years  of  grace  ! 


II 

SCHOOL-TEACHING  AND   DISCIPLINE 

THE  disciples  called  Our  Lord  "Teacher" 
—  a  beautiful  word ;  when  people  were 
in  difficulties,  they  came  to  Him  for  help  : 
"Teacher,  what  shall  we  do  ?"  In  country 
schools  one  hears  it  to-day,  and  it  is  very 
pretty.  The  child,  finding  the  problem  too 
much  for  its  abilities,  addresses  the  pale 
woman  at  the  desk  :  "Teacher,  will  you  help 
me  with  this  ?"  The  Authorised  Version 
translated  the  Greek  word  "teacher"  into 
"master,"  the  then  English  equivalent,  and 
the  word  survives  in  our  private  schools 
even  unto  this  day.  The  teacher  must  be 
a  Leader,  a  Master,  in  many  cases  a  Lion- 
tamer,  a  manager  of  wild  beasts.  It  is  essen- 
tial, then,  that  the  man  or  woman  who  teaches 
should  have  a  strong  personality,  a  domi- 
nant, fearless  disposition.  He  is  the  Captain 


School-teaching  and  Discipline      1 3 

of  the  ship,  and  is  as  much  alone  in  the  school- 
room as  the  captain  is  alone  with  his  crew 
on  the  high  seas.  Those  who  have  never 
taught  have  no  idea  of  the  loneliness  and 
responsibility  of  a  school-teacher  shut  up 
in  a  big  schoolroom  with  a  pack  of  wild  boys 
and  girls.  The  teacher  can  consult  outside 
of  hours  with  his  superiors  or  colleagues ; 
he  can  get  advice  and  talk  over  his  difficulties. 
But  when  he  goes  into  the  schoolroom,  shuts 
the  door,  takes  the  lonely  seat  behind  the 
desk,  and  looks  into  the  shining  morning 
faces,  then  he  is  thrown  back  absolutely  on 
himself.  No  power  on  earth  can  help  him, 
and  nothing  can  save  the  situation  if  he 
makes  a  blunder.  There  he  needs  all  his  re- 
sources, all  his  courage,  and  infinite  patience. 
I  remember  when  I  first  taught  school, 
hardly  more  than  a  boy  myself,  I  was  sent 
in  evenings  to  preside  over  "study  hour." 
This  meant  that  I  was  to  sit  behind  a  desk 
in  a  big  room  filled  with  healthy  boys,  and 
see  that  no  one  spoke  or  made  a  noise  for  an 
hour.  I  could  not  interest  them,  for  I,  too, 


14     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

must  say  nothing.  They  came  jostling, 
tumbling,  hilariously,  in ;  I  rang  a  bell, 
which  meant  instant  silence.  That  bell 
gave  forth  no  uncertain  sound ;  I  put  my 
whole  personality  into  my  finger  as  I  pressed 
the  electric  button,  and  I  tried  to  make  it 
trill  just  the  psychological  length  of  time, 
neither  too  short  nor  too  long.  Yet  every 
time  I  rang  that  bell  I  wondered  if  they 
would  really  obey.  They  did,  but  I  never 
recovered  from  my  amazement  at  the  mir- 
acle. I  used  to  look  at  them  as  they  sat  over 
their  tasks  with  puckered  brow  and  wonder, 
since  they  were  so  many  and  united,  and  I 
was  all  alone,  why  they  did  not  devour  me. 
To-day,  when  I  see  in  a  big  public  school,  a 
thin,  anaemic  woman  sit  behind  a  desk  and 
control  a  roomfull  of  young  myrmidons,  I 
marvel  at  the  mysterious  force  of  the  individ- 
ual soul. 

For  the  actual  teaching  in  a  school  is  the 
least  of  the  teacher's  difficulties.  Children 
must  be  led,  must  be  controlled ;  order  and 
discipline  must  somehow  be  maintained,  or 


School-teaching  and  Discipline      15 

the  teacher  must  seek  another  situation. 
In  a  private  boarding-school  the  personal 
contact  is  much  closer  and  much  more  pro- 
longed. One  cannot  leave  his  task,  as  the 
workman  drops  his  hammer  at  the  stroke  of 
twelve.  In  the  school  where  I  learned  to 
teach,  I  rose  at  seven,  presided  over  a  break- 
fast-table, taught  various  classes  from  half 
past  eight  to  one,  played  outdoors  with  boys 
in  the  afternoon  (how  fortunate  for  me  that 
I  loved  sports  even  more  than  the  pupils 
did),  presided  at  the  dinner-table,  presided 
at  study  hour,  and  then  went  upstairs  to 
see  that  the  smaller  boys  took  their  hot 
baths  and  retired  in  good  order.  Energy, 
cheerfulness,  patience,  and  sympathy  are  all 
helpful. 

In  teaching  a  class,  either  in  boarding- 
school  or  day-school,  or,  for  that  matter,  in 
college,  certain  practical  hints  may  be  not 
impertinent  here.  Nothing  is  too  minute 
or  too  trivial  that  concerns  the  great  art  of 
teaching.  Constant  and  tremendous  enthu- 
siasm for  the  subject  taught  is  essential. 


1 6     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

While  one  is  actually  teaching  it,  this  thing, 
whatever  it  may  be,  should  seem  to  be  the 
most  important  thing  in  time  or  eternity. 
The  late  President  Harper,  who  was  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  teachers  I  have  ever 
known,  told  me  that  he  had  taught  the  first 
verse  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  I  have 
forgotten  how  many  thousand  times.  I 
remarked  that  he  always  seemed  enthusiastic. 
He  said  :  "Sometimes  I  feel  wildly  enthu- 
siastic ;  other  times  I  have  no  enthusiasm  at 
all.  When  I  have  no  enthusiasm,  then  I 
create  it."  It  is  absurd  that  a  teacher 
should  allow  a  headache  or  a  sleepless  night 
to  affect  his  teaching.  If  his  health  will 
permit  him  to  enter  the  classroom,  he 
must  teach  with  zeal  and  vigour. 

Just  as  enthusiasm  and  force  are  conta- 
gious, so  are  lassitude  and  indifference.  I 
asked  a  student  once  what  was  the  matter 
with  a  certain  teacher.  "Well,"  he  said, 
"our  classroom  is  a  race."  "A  race  ?" 
"Yes,  it's  a  race  to  see  who  will  get  to  sleep 
first,  the  class  or  the  teacher."  There  are 


School-teaching  and  Discipline      17 

men  and  women  engaged  in  teaching  who 
are  such  ciphers  in  the  classroom  that  they 
might  just  as  well  teach  by  telephone,  and 
have  a  phonograph  on  the  desk  to  record  the 
pupils'  answers. 

And  the  teacher  who  emanates  force,  in 
some  altogether  mysterious  manner,  gets  it 
back.  The  students  react  on  the  man  be- 
hind the  desk.  I  do  not  know  how  many 
times  I  have  risen  in  the  morning  feeling  so 
weary  and  ill  that  I  wondered  if  I  could  get 
to  the  college.  Then  at  the  end  of  the  hour's 
teaching,  I  have  felt  a  veritable  glow  of  life 
and  energy.  I  know  that  virtue  has  gone  out 
of  me,  but  some  kind  of  vigour  has  taken  its 
place. 

A  teacher  should  never  begin  with  an 
apology  —  ignorance  of  the  subject,  lack  of 
time,  ill  health,  etc.  But  a  teacher  should 
never  bluff.  Every  man  or  woman  should 
acknowledge  a  mistake  when  pointed  out  to 
him  by  a  pupil,  and  be  grateful  for  it. 
"Every  schoolboy  knows"  things  that  the 
teacher  has  forgotten,  or  perhaps  never 


1 8     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

knew.  Hardly  a  man  en  any  college  faculty 
could  pass  all  the  entrance  requirements. 
And  if  a  student  asks  a  question  which  the 
teacher  cannot  answer,  confess  ignorance 
at  once.  This  will  sometimes  happen  in 
one's  own  subject.  No  matter.  The  stu- 
dents respect  a  teacher  who  is  truthful,  and 
will  believe  him  when  he  does  speak  out  of  an 
abundance  of  knowl^Ige.  The  very  first 
pupils  to  see  through  a  teacher  who  dodges 
questions  or  attempts  to  cover  ignorance  are 
the  bluffers,  for  they  understand  the  art  of 
bluffing  by  experience,  and  cannot  be  fooled. 
Once  a  teacher  has  a  reputation  for  bluffing, 
he  is  lost.  The  students  who  cheat  and  the 
students  who  bluff  never  forgive  a  teacher 
for  these  sins.  They  exact  a  much  higher 
standard  of  us  than  they  set  for  themselves. 
This  is  quite  right.  We  are  their  leaders. 

Never  praise  an  individual  pupil  in  the 
presence  of  the  class.  This  is  fatal,  for  the 
teacher  must  not  be  suspected  of  having 
favourites.  And  it  is  hard  on  the  one 
praised,  as  he  will  soon  find  out.  It  is 


School-teaching  and  Discipline      19 

difficult  resolutely  to  refrain  from  doing 
this.  There  are  times  when  the  recitation 
drags  abominably,  when  a  succession  of 
failures  or  utterly  stupid  answers  makes  the 
teacher's  heart  sick.  Then  he  calls  on  the 
one  boy  or  girl  who  is  always  prepared, 
always  attentive,  always  intelligent.  A 
brilliant  answer  is  balm  to  the  soul,  but  no 
comment  on  it  should  be  made.  The  way 
to  encourage  good  pupils,  stimulate  their 
ambition,  and  get  the  very  best  out  of  them, 
is  to  ask  them  singly  to  remain  after  class, 
or  to  seize  an  opportunity  when  it  presents 
itself,  and  express  pleasure  in  their  efforts, 
suggest  a  good  book  to  read,  or  let  them  see 
in  some  way  that  they  have  attracted  your 
attention  and  made  an  impression  on  your 
mind.  A  student  never  forgets  an  encour- 
aging private  word,  when  it  is  given  with 
sincere  respect  and  admiration.  I  once 
asked  a  college  junior  to  remain  a  moment 
as  the  class  was  passing  out,  and  when  we 
were  alone,  I  told  him  how  much  I  appre- 
ciated his  work.  He  said  that  that  was  the 


2o     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

first  time  in  his  life  either  in  school  or  col- 
lege that  any  teacher  had  spoken  to  him 
personally  and  commended  his  efforts.  Of 
course  he  outdid  himself  after  that,  know- 
ing that  I  expected  great  things  of  him, 
and  he  later  became  a  specialist  in  the 
subject  I  was  teaching. 

If  it  is  important,  and  I  am  sure  it  is, 
never  to  praise  an  individual  student  in  the 
presence  of  the  class,  it  is  far  more  important 
never  to  make  fun  of  a  dull  student,  or  a 
bad  recitation  ;  and  it  is  an  absolute  rule,  to 
which  there  are  no  exceptions  under  any 
conceivable  circumstances,  never  to  use 
sarcasm  toward  an  individual  student  be- 
fore his  mates.  This  may  become  a  terribly 
dangerous  habit,  and  it  is  one  that  grows 
with  astonishing  speed.  The  teacher  is 
doing  a  cheap  and  utterly  contemptible 
thing  —  raising  a  laugh  at  the  expense  of  an 
individual  who  is  at  his  mercy.  It  is  an 
awkward  thing  to  play  with  souls.  You 
may  arouse  momentary  admiration  for  your 
wit,  but  it  is  probable  that  you  have  killed 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     21 

forever  the  chance  to  influence  the  victim 
of  your  tyranny.  This  boy  or  girl  is  lost  to 
you,  and  sometimes  years  later  he  will 
remember  you  with  a  flush  of  anger.  It  is 
difficult  to  avoid  sarcasm  and  ridicule  in 
certain  instances  —  some  students  leave 
such  wonderful  openings  and  supply  such 
golden  opportunities  for  your  wit.  Resist 
this  temptation. 

Treat  good  and  bad  recitations  with 
apparently  equal  respect.  Teachers  are 
always  eager  to  have  their  pupils  respect 
them,  but  how  many  teachers  really  respect 
their  pupils  ?  There  are  teachers  who  lis- 
ten to  good  recitations  or  to  requests  for 
information  with  grinning  condescension, 
and  to  poor  recitations  with  contempt. 
Assume  that  every  pupil  is  seriously  inter- 
ested and  doing  his  best,  and  you  will  have 
less  trouble.  We  had  a  teacher  at  school 
when  I  was  a  boy  who  began  each  recitation 
by  calling  on  two  or  three,  and  then  wearily 
remarked,  "Now  we'll  hear  from  the  dunces." 
These  latter  felt  classified,  and  made  no 


22     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

attempt  to  rise  from  the  slough.  If  a  stu- 
dent makes  systematically  bad  or  stupid 
recitations,  speak  to  him  privately  :  "This 
subject  seems  very  difficult  to  you.  I  am 
sorry  to  be  forced  every  day  to  give  you  a 
low  mark.  Unless  you  improve,  you  must 
know  you  cannot  possibly  pass.  Is  there 
any  suggestion  I  can  make  that  will  help 
you  r"  A  little  conversation  like  that  can- 
not do  any  harm,  and  may  accomplish  much 
good.  The  pupil  will  be  cured  of  any  sus- 
picion that  the  teacher  is  "down  on  him" 
(a  common  superstition  among  students), 
he  will  know  that  the  teacher  is  not  indiffer- 
ent, but  really  anxious  that  he  should  do 
better,  and  he  will  make  that  renewed  effort 
that  invariably  follows  personal  attention. 
Always  remember  that  the  business  of  the 
teacher  is  not  to  see  how  difficult  and  odious 
he  can  make  his  subject,  not  to  see  how  many 
boys  and  girls  he  can  catch  off  their  guard, 
not  to  blow  out  the  lamp  of  the  mind  with 
the  chill  wind  of  indifference,  but  to  get  the 
highest  results  out  of  each  individual  stu- 
dent committed  to  his  care. 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     23 

The  teacher  should  never  lose  his  temper 
in  the  presence  of  the  class.  If  a  man,  he 
may  take  refuge  in  profane  soliloquies ;  if  a 
woman,  she  may  follow  the  example  of  one 
sweet-faced  and  apparently  tranquil  girl  — 
go  out  in  the  yard  and  gnaw  a  post ;  but 
there  must  be  no  display  of  rage  before  the 
clear  eyes  of  children.  When  I  taught 
school,  there  were  times  when  the  indiffer- 
ence, stupidity,  flippancy,  or  silliness  of  the 
class  brought  me  suddenly  to  such  a  pitch  of 
rage,  that  I  dared  not  trust  myself  to  speak ; 
I  would  clutch  the  arms  of  my  chair,  and 
swallow  foam  until  I  felt  complete  self- 
command  ;  then  I  could  speak  with  quiet 
gravity.  The  boys  all  saw  what  was  the 
matter  with  me,  and  learned  something  not 
in  the  book.  I  can  still  feel  on  my  face  the 
claws  of  a  female  teacher  who  put  them  there 
forty  years  ago.  I  suppose  I  was  inatten- 
tive, or  whispering  to  my  neighbour,  or  doing 
something  forbidden  :  the  woman  suddenly 
left  the  platform,  rushed  down  the  aisle, 
seized  me  on  the  mouth,  and  apparently 


24     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

tried  to  dislocate  my  jaw.  It  was  impres- 
sive, but  not  edifying.  Every  time  a  teacher 
flies  into  a  passion  in  the  schoolroom,  he  is 
sure  either  to  do  or  to  say  something  foolish 
—  something  that  for  the  moment  brings 
him  below  the  level  of  the  intelligence  of  the 
flock.  He  will  bitterly  regret  it  afterwards, 
for  he  will  find  that  it  is  harder  to  climb 
than  to  fall,  and  he  has  all  that  lost  ground 
to  recover. 

When  penalties  must  be  given,  it  is  better 
to  give  them  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger. 
I  have  seen  teachers  who  threw  out  penalties 
in  impetuous  rage,  losing  all  the  moral  effect 
of  the  punishment.  I  have  seen  other 
teachers  impose  penalties  with  a  triumphant 
laugh,  as  though  they  were  playing  a  game 
with  the  children,  and  had  made  a  clever 
checkmate.  "Ha  !  ha  !  that  will  cost  you 
two  marks  ! "  A  healthy  child  then  sets 
his  brain  to  work  in  the  endeavour  next 
time  to  outwit  the  antagonist.  "Stinking 
old  fool !  I'll  show  him ! "  says  the  lad 
to  himself.  Penalties  should  be  given  as 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     25 

though  they  hurt  the  teacher  as  much  as 
the  criminal,  as  though  for  the  moment 
the  boy  had  really  sunk  low  in  the  teacher's 
good  opinion,  had  done  something  that 
only  continuous  good  behaviour  could  re- 
pair. It  is  well  to  have  a  moment  of  elo- 
quent silence  intervene  between  the  offence 
and  the  punishment,  and  then  have  the 
penalty  fall  like  fate. 

For  this  reason,  bad  marks  for  misbe- 
haviour and  disciplinary  penalties  should  be 
given  as  seldom  as  possible.  ,~  Familiarity 
breeds  contempt.  Those  teachers  who  are 
always  handing  down  demerits  are  always 
having  trouble.  Every  penalty  should  be 
an  event  in  the  life  of  the  pupil.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  observe  how  lightly  children  re- 
gard the  very  same  penalty  when  inflicted 
by  one  teacher,  and  how  deeply  it  hurts  when 
inflicted  by  another.  The  reason  is  that 
children  have  no  respect  for  some  teachers, 
while  for  others  they  will  do  everything  to 
stand  high  in  their  regard.  And  while  it  is 
important  to  give  penalties  very  rarely,  it  is 


26     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

still  more  important  never  to  take  them  off. 
The  pupil  must  realise  that  when  he  receives 
a  bad  mark,  nothing  on  earth  can  remove  it. 
I  well  remember  two  teachers  in  the  same 
school.  One  began  the  year  by  giving  out 
demerits  very  freely  and  for  the  most  trivial 
things ;  then  at  the  end  of  the  school  day, 
the  culprits  flocked  around  him,  begging 
him  to  remove  certain  of  the  afflictions, 
promising  to  do  better,  saying  they  did  not 
mean  to  be  bad.  To  some  he  yielded. 
The  result  was  that  for  months  he  had  to  go 
through  this  process  every  day,  and  when- 
ever a  boy  received  a  penalty,  he  had  the 
hope  of  getting  it  cancelled.  The  other 
teacher  gave  only  two  or  three  demerits  the 
first  week.  Each  boy  came  to  him  after- 
ward, and  asked  for  their  removal.  The 
teacher  said,  '*!  am  very  sorry  —  I  never 
give  a  penalty  if  I  can  help  it,  but  once  given, 
I  shall  never  under  any  circumstances  take 
it  off.  Even  if  I  find  I  have  made  a  mis- 
take, and  given  it  to  an  innocent  boy,  I 
shall  not  take  it  off.  And  I  shall  try  not  to 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     27 

make  any  mistakes."  After  the  first  week, 
no  boy  ever  asked  him  to  remove  a  bad  mark, 
but  they  all  endeavoured  to  avoid  receiving 
one. 

Whenever  it  is  possible, —  it  is  not  always 
possible, —  it  is  best  not  to  rebuke  an  individ- 
ual by  name  in  the  presence  of  the  class. 
Sometimes  this  permanently  antagonises  the 
victim,  sometimes  it  makes  a  hero  out  of 
him  in  the  estimation  of  his  mates.  When 
there  is  a  little  plague  spot  of  irruption  in 
the  class  room,  when  there  is  individual  dis- 
order or  inattention,  it  is  better  to  speak  to 
the  class  as  a  whole,  rather  than  to  single 
out  one  person  by  name.  And  if  there  is 
one  boy  or  girl  who  persists  in  repeated 
offences  of  this  nature,  then  it  is  well  to 
keep  the  culprit  a  moment  after  class,  and, 
after  everyone  has  gone  out,  to  talk  very 
frankly,  very  earnestly,  but  never  angrily  or 
sarcastically  with  him.  Sometimes  this 
method  will  result  not  only  in  complete  ref- 
ormation, but  in  transforming  the  individ- 
ual from  a  leader  of  disturbance  into  an 


28     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

influence  for  good  order.  Very  few  boys 
or  girls  can  resist  a  quiet  personal  talk.  And 
those  who  are  wilfully  and  deliberately  bad 
are  terribly  afraid  of  it,  because  they  suffer 
such  embarrassment  and  discomfort.  I  re- 
member one  boys'  school  where  the  teacher 
was  famous  for  these  interviews,  and  the  re- 
mark of  a  young  villain,  "Say,  I'd  rather 
he'd  lick  me  any  day  than  talk  to  me  !" 

It  is  a  great  advantage  to  a  teacher  to  be 
physically  big  and  physically  strong;  and 
if  the  teacher  be  a  woman,  to  have  robust 
health.  She  will  need  it  all  in  the  course  of 
an  average  day.  One  admirable  discipli- 
nary officer  in  a  college  told  me  that  in  his 
many  years  of  teaching  he  had  always  thanked 
God  he  was  over  six  feet  high.  He  could 
generally  look  down  on  the  offender,  while 
the  poor  wretch  had  to  look  up  to  him. 
Still  discipline,  after  all,  is  a  matter  of  per- 
sonality rather  than  avoirdupois.  There 
are  men  of  colossal  size  who  somehow 
never  succeed  in  enforcing  discipline;  the 
worst  teacher  I  had  in  college  was  six  feet 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     29 

four.  There  are  other  men,  small  and  un- 
impressive at  first  sight,  who  would  be 
lost  in  a  crowd,  and  yet  who  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  enforcing  the  most  rigid  discipline. 
When  I  was  five  years  old,  I  was  sent  to 
the  Webster  public  school  in  New  Haven, 
the  "toughest"  district  school  I  ever  saw. 
The  majority  of  the  boys  and  girls  came 
from  streets  where  no  well-dressed  boy 
could  walk  with  impunity.  I  remember 
the  horrible  fear  I  had  of  "the  micks 
of  Morocco  Street,"  a  fear  well-founded, 
for  I  was  small  even  for  my  age,  and  fre- 
quently suffered  at  the  hands  of  these 
merciless  brigands.  How  my  heart  aches 
now  for  the  women  who  had  to  teach  in  that 
school !  The  unspeakably  obscene  language 
of  the  boys  at  recess,  the  filth  and  dirt  they 
brought  into  the  school  room,  the  naive 
gestures  of  physical  necessity  they  made 
when  they  raised  the  other  hand  for  per- 
mission to  "go  out,"  the  insolent  manner  in 
which  they  answered  the  teacher's  questions, 
the  ribald  laughter  that  resounded  on  occa- 


30     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

sions  skilfully  prepared  to  produce  it !  No 
boy  ever  rose  to  recite  without  finding  pins, 
tacks  (and  I  remember  one  file)  put  in  his 
chair  to  greet  his  downsitting  —  then  the 
howl  of  rage,  the  back-handed  blow,  and  the 
teacher's  vain  remonstrance.  Spitballs, 
heavy  with  their  damp  freight,  flew  around 
the  room,  falling  on  the  just  and  the  unjust. 
Not  a  day  passed  that  the  teacher  did  not 
take  out  the  whip,  and  lash  the  boys  across 
the  palms. 

Over  this  whirlwind  of  childish  savagery, 
disorder,  corruption,  and  sin  a  little  man  sat 
enthroned  as  principal.  Mr.  Lewis  was  the 
supreme  court,  and  no  boy,  however  wicked 
or  fearless,  spoke  his  name  above  an  awed 
whisper.  Once  in  a  while  he  would  walk 
through  our  room,  very  casually,  without 
looking  at  anybody.  The  most  absolute  si- 
lence marked  his  advent.  He  seemed  to  me 
to  be  about  eleven  feet  high,  and  to  breathe 
forth  threatening  and  slaughter.  Years  after- 
ward, when  I  returned  to  New  Haven,  I  saw 
him,  and  marvelled  at  his  tiny  frame  and 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     31 

puny  appearance.  Was  this  gray-haired 
little  man  the  terror  of  my  childhood  ? 
Yet  the  biggest,  the  roughest,  and  the  most 
daredevil  boys  in  the  school  regarded  him 
with  mortal  terror.  He  stood  serene  and 
quiet,  the  bulwark  against  anarchy.  I 
remember  one  terribly  tough,  strong  Irish 
lad,  John  Devanney,  who  was  my  hero.  I 
secretly  sent  him  a  Christmas  present  at  the 
school  celebration,  and  he  waved  it  at  me 
triumphantly,  saying,  "Huh  !  my  present  is 
a  lot  better  than  yours  ! "  He  did  not  know 
that  I  was  the  donor,  and  I  did  not  dare  tell 
him.  He  was  my  hero,  because  when  I 
was  whipped  by  the  teacher,  I  cried ;  when 
he  was  whipped,  he  laughed.  I  can  see  him 
now,  standing  up  before  the  class,  the  female 
teacher  hitting  his  hand  with  the  whip  with 
all  her  might,  while  he  laughed  condescend- 
ingly at  her  feeble  efforts.  Yet  she  had  her 
trump  card.  When  everything  else  failed, 
she  would  say,  "I  will  send  you  to  Mr. 
Lewis,"  and  then  the  ruddy  cheeks  of  the 
great  John  Devanney  turned  pale  with  fear. 


32     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

What  Mr.  Lewis  did  to  these  lads  no  one 
else  ever  knew,  but  strange  tales  came  from 
those  mysterious  interviews.  He  was  the 
one  salvation  of  the  teachers,  and  for  over 
forty  years  he  commanded  the  situation, 
and  made  citizens  somehow  out  of  that  un- 
promising material.  I  remember  one  day, 
coming  out  after  school  was  over,  he  spoke 
to  me  kindly,  with  a  smile.  I  was  in  such 
terror  that  I  could  say  nothing ;  but  as  soon 
as  I  got  around  the  corner,  I  ran  for  my  life, 
lest  he  should  call  me  back  and  eat  me.  A 
small  man  and  a  great  personality  ! 

For  the  average  boy  or  girl,  with  ordinary 
health  and  ordinary  ability,  I  believe  the 
public  school  is  better  than  the  private.  It 
is  true  that  in  a  public  school  there  are  many 
undesirable  pupils  —  it  is  often  a  school  of 
bad  manners.  Girls  may  become  vulgar 
and  slangy,  boys  may  become  coarse  and 
foul-mouthed.  Good  home  influences,  re- 
ligious training,  refinement,  and  the  real 
companionship  of  father  and  mother  will 
more  than  offset  this.  The  small  boy  is  a 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     33 

naturally  dirty  little  animal,  and  the  lan- 
guage, pictures,  and  associations  in  his  envi- 
ronment at  a  public  school  are  often  atro- 
ciously bad.  Still,  the  public  school  is  an 
absolute  democracy — the  only  pure  democ- 
racy to  be  found  in  America.  He  lives  in  a 
field  of  free  competition  —  he  rises  or  falls, 
swims  or  sinks  on  his  merits.  In  scholar- 
ship he  competes  fairly  with  all  his  class- 
mates, and  the  son  of  the  labourer  has  the 
same  chance  as  the  son  of  the  millionnaire. 
If  he  does  not  keep  up  to  a  certain  grade, 
down  he  goes  to  the  lower  room,  and  no 
influence  or  outside  aid  can  save  him.  The 
schools  are  all  crowded,  and  those  who  can- 
not or  will  not  study  must  drop  out  under 
the  merciless  law  of  competition.  His  com- 
rades, both  boys  and  girls,  are  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  democracy,  and  God  help 
the  little  snob  !  If  he  is  fair  and  square, 
asking  no  special  favours,  he  will  form  many 
friendships  and  stand  high  with  his  fellows. 
If  he  is  selfish,  conceited,  eccentric,  his  class- 
mates will  take  it  out  of  him,  or  drive  him 


34     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

away.  He  sees  all  kinds  of  life,  learns  the 
pure  and  noble  along  with  the  vulgar  and 
obscene,  and  literally  fights  his  way  upward. 
He  learns  to  respect  boys  and  girls  for  what 
they  are  and  for  what  they  can  do,  rather 
than  for  the  backing  they  have  or  the  homes 
that  support  them.  If  he  does  not  go  to 
college,  he  cannot  graduate  from  a  high 
school  without  some  knowledge  of  all  sides 
of  human  nature,  and  he  is  prepared  to  meet 
and  to  understand  all  sorts  of  people.  If 
he  does  go  to  college,  he  will  probably  go 
with  better  habits  of  study,  with  more  ambi- 
tion to  excel  in  scholarship,  and  with  more 
self-reliance  than  if  he  came  from  a  private 
fitting  school. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  a  boy  or  girl  is  in 
poor  health,  or  very  far  behind  in  certain 
studies,  he  is  perhaps  better  off  in  a  good  pri- 
vate school.  He  will  learn  good  manners, 
will  associate  with  children  of  good  breeding 
for  the  most  part,  and  will  have  definite  per- 
sonal moral  and  religious  training.  The 
driving  out  of  the  Bible  and  prayers  from 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     35 

many  public  schools  is  a  narrow-minded, 
stupid,  and  silly  policy,  as  the  Bible  and 
Christianity  are  the  real  foundation  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  citizenship.  In  almost  all  private 
schools  the  influences  are  positively  good, 
and  the  boys  and  girls  who  graduate  from 
them  are  at  home  in  cultivated  society. 
Then  the  health  of  individual  students  is 
carefully  attended  to,  and  those  who  are 
backward  in  certain  studies  are  personally 
drilled  and  coached.  If  the  boy  goes  to 
college,  he  enters  with  a  circle  of  friends, 
and  his  way  is  easier  and  less  lonely.  For 
this  very  reason,  he  may  be  less  self-re- 
liant, less  independent,  and  apt  to  believe 
that  his  little  circle  really  constitutes  public 
opinion.  Cowardice  and  conceit  are  no 
more  in  favour  in  an  exclusive  private  school 
than  they  are  elsewhere,  though  they  may 
not  be  eliminated  by  such  drastic  measures 
as  in  a  public  institution. 

If  a  boy  goes  to  a  private  school  after  he 
has  attended  a  public  one,  it  is  sometimes 
a  happy  combination.  But  there  are  some 


36     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

private  schools  that  will  not  take  pupils 
after  they  have  reached  a  certain  age.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  a  child  goes  to  a  pri- 
vate school  very  young,  he  fails  to  become 
really  acquainted  with  his  parents,  and  is 
sometimes  actually  unfitted  for  domestic 
life.  There  are  boys  who  go  to  an  exclusive 
school  at  the  age  of  ten ;  they  live  only  with 
rich  men's  sons  ;  the  summer  vacations  they 
do  not  spend  at  home,  but  with  house- 
parties  in  the  country,  or  camping  out  lux- 
uriously in  the  woods,  or  travelling  in  Eu- 
rope. Then  they  go  to  college,  and  then  to  a 
professional  school ;  so  that  there  are  many 
cases  of  boys  who  from  the  age  of  ten  to  the 
age  of  twenty-six  have  hardly  lived  at  home 
at  all — have  practically  lived  in  a  bachelors' 
club  for  sixteen  years,  and  are  unacquainted 
with  their  parents.  When  their  parents 
are  lacking  in  the  character,  morality,  reli- 
gion, refinement,  and  good  sense  necessary  to 
bring  up  children,  this  may  be  not  so  unfor- 
tunate. 

When  a  teacher,  either  in  a  public  or  a 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     37 

private  school,  discovers  and  can  prove  that 
a  boy  or  girl  is  deliberately  and  wilfully  bad, 
and  when  all  means  undertaken  for  improve- 
ment have  failed,  it  is  the  manifest  duty  of 
the  teacher  to  see  that  this  individual  is  per- 
manently expelled  from  the  institution. 
Every  teacher  is  in  a  position  of  trust;  he 
has  a  duty  toward  the  parents  who  have 
entrusted  their  children  to  his  care.  One 
evil  boy  or  girl  can  corrupt  many  others,  and 
can  really  lower  the  standard  of  an  entire 
institution.  Expulsion  is  the  sole  remedy. 
I  am  convinced  by  observation  that  it  is  not 
applied  often  enough,  especially  in  private 
schools. 

Fathers  and  mothers  can  help  the  school 
principal  and  the  school-teacher  immensely 
not  merely  by  taking  an  intelligent  interest 
in  the  studies  of  their  children,  talking  with 
them  sympathetically  about  their  lessons, 
their  teachers,  and  the  general  life  of  the 
school,  but  by  loyally  supporting  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  institution.  There  are  many 
foolish  parents  who  take  the  child's  part 


193914 


38     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

when  he  imagines  he  has  a  grievance.  Al- 
though the  normal  mother  loves  her  child 
better  than  she  loves  herself,  better  than 
she  loves  life,  and  although  nothing  fills 
her  with  more  delight  than  to  have  the  child 
make  a  good  record  at  school,  and  nothing 
tortures  her  more  cruelly  than  to  have  the 
child  fall  into  disgrace,  it  is  in  nearly  all  cases 
a  bad  thing  for  the  child  to  have  the  mother 
an  active  partisan  against  school  discipline. 
The  parents  can  show  the  utmost  tender- 
ness toward  their  offspring,  and  the  utmost 
sympathy  when  misfortunes  come,  and  yet 
staunchly  support  the  rules  of  the  school. 
No  teacher  ever  expects  that  a  mother  will 
believe  her  child  to  be  wilfully  bad,  or  will 
admit  it  if  she  does  believe  it.  I  always 
admire  a  mother  when  she  comes  to  me  and 
says  that  her  son  has  been  unfortunate,  per- 
haps, or  weak,  but  surely  not  evil ;  if  a 
mother  will  not  stand  up  for  her  son,  who 
will  ?  But  parents,  in  the  interests  of  their 
children,  should  support  school  discipline, 
even  when  their  own  lamb  is  gored.  One  of 


School-teaching  and  Discipline     39 

the  greatest  difficulties  public  school-teachers 
have  to  contend  with  is  the  visit  of  an  irate 
father  bringing  his  child,  and  insisting  on 
better  treatment.  In  Germany  when  a  boy 
gets  a  whipping  at  school,  he  receives  an- 
other when  he  comes  home;  in  America, 
when  a  boy  gets  the  whipping,  the  father 
goes  to  school  and  tries  to  whip  the  teacher. 
If  a  teacher  occupies  a  subordinate  posi- 
tion either  in  school  or  college,  subordinate 
to  the  head  of  the  department,  or  subordi- 
nate to  the  principal,  he  should  remember 
that  the  obedience  he  demands  from  his 
pupils  must  be  shown  by  him  toward  those 
higher  in  authority.  Obey  orders  cheerfully, 
and  try  to  carry  out  faithfully  the  policy  of 
your  superiors.  If  your  Head  is  a  man  you 
cannot  respect,  do  the  best  you  can  under  the 
circumstances,  and  do  not  indulge  in  innu- 
endo :  if  the  circumstances  become  intoler- 
able, leave  as  quietly  as  possible,  and  seek 
another  field  for  your  efforts.  But  remem- 
ber that  it  is  possible  you  may  be  mistaken, 
and  the  superior  officer  right.  You  do  not 


40     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

know  it  all.  Work  for  the  good  of  the  insti- 
tution, and  not  for  yourself.  Above  all, 
never  try  to  create  a  party  among  the  pupils, 
never  organise  them  into  a  personal  sym- 
pathetic body-guard.  In  matters  of  school 
or  college  discipline  or  policy,  never  take  the 
pupils  into  your  confidence.  The  business 
of  the  teacher  is  not  to  give  confidences,  but 
to  receive  them. 


Ill 


PRIVATE    SCHOOL-TEACHING   AND    SCHOLAR- 
SHIP 

WE  hear  a  great  deal  nowadays  of  the 
lack  of  enthusiasm  for  scholarship 
among  university  students ;  this  is  no  local 
issue,  but  a  difficulty  recognised  everywhere, 
and  one  lamented  by  every  teacher.  The 
faculties  of  all  American  universities  are 
constantly  busy  devising  schemes  by  which 
the  ambition  of  students  may  be  stimulated, 
and  their  attention  occasionally  diverted 
to  the  curriculum.  Some  think  this  can  be 
accomplished  by  severe  penalties  for  neglect 
and  indifference,  others  believe  in  the  temp- 
tation of  prizes  and  the  frequent  publication 
of  honour  lists.  But  from  Seattle  to  Florida, 
in  urban  and  in  country  institutions,  the 
anxiety  of  the  professors  is  audible  :  "What 
can  we  do  to  make  the  students  study  ? " 

41 


42     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

Athletics  are  only  one  obstacle,  and  not  the 
most  formidable;  there  are  the  secret 
societies,  which  afflict  schools  as  well  as 
colleges,  and  obsess  the  minds  of  ten  times 
the  number  of  successful  candidates  ;  there 
are  the  undergraduate  organisations,  devoted 
to  almost  every  conceivable  object  except 
the  course  of  study ;  there  are  the  men  who 
are  "working  their  way  through,"  and  have 
no  time  to  prepare  any  lessons ;  there  are  the 
college  papers,  where  some  young  gentle- 
men toil  longer  and  harder  than  they  ever 
will  again ;  there  are  dances,  concerts, 
visits  to  a  neighbouring  city;  there  are 
extraordinary  and  baffling  cases  of  chronic 
ill  health  and  complicated  dentistry,  that 
require  frequent  absences,  and  where  the 
patient  is  able  to  do  everything  except  at- 
tend classes ;  there  is  the  call  of  the  blood. 
In  reading  the  Confessions  of  an  Oxford 
Don,  I  obtained  much  wicked  delight  in 
finding  that  the  same  problems  that  trouble 
American  deans  and  faculties  are  in  Eng- 
land just  as  prominent  and  just  as  difficult 


Private  Schools  and  Scholarship    43 

to  solve ;  the  Don  especially  lamented  the 
vast  number  of  Oxonians  who  require  the  con- 
stant attention  of  London  dentists.  But, 
although  extracurriculum  activities  are  on 
the  increase,  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  less 
enthusiasm  for  study  than  in  former  times. 
I  do  not  believe  there  was  ever  any  epoch  in 
the  world's  history  when  the  majority  of 
young  men  sincerely  regarded  hard  appli- 
cation to  books  as  the  joy  of  life.  The  real 
difficulty  that  every  professor  has  to  con- 
tend with  is  eternal  youth. 

How  much  love  for  study  is  there  in  the 
home,  and  how  much  enthusiasm  for  learn- 
ing in  the  private  fitting  schools  ?  If  a 
boy's  father  and  mother  bring  him  up  among 
books,  if  they  intelligently  discuss  his  school 
courses  and  his  general  reading  with  him, 
if  their  own  opinions  command  his  respect, 
he  will  generally  shine  as  an  intellectual  star 
at  college.  Nay,  if  the  boy's  mother  really 
prefers  her  son's  proficiency  in  scholarship 
to  his  social  success  among  his  mates,  he 
will  probably  give  the  faculty  no  trouble. 


44     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

Unfortunately,  there  are  many  silly  mothers 
who  exalt  membership  in  secret  societies  and 
social  popularity  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
boy  himself  loses  all  sense  of  proportion. 
And  what  a  perpetual  and  unmitigated 
nuisance  a  silly  mother  is  to  the  head-master 
of  a  school  !  Visiting  the  school,  petting 
the  already  pampered  weakling,  siding  with 
him  against  discipline,  asking  for  special 
privileges,  doing  everything  to  destroy  the 
main  object  of  his  residence. 

I  have  observed  a  paradox  in  some  of  our 
more  expensive  private  secondary  schools. 
The  boy  is  occasionally  morally  superior  to 
his  parents.  Among  the  enormous  variety 
of  privileges  that  a  rich  man  can  buy,  is  a 
Christian  education ;  a  religious  environ- 
ment for  his  offspring.  There  are  cases 
where  a  man  without  much  or  any  religious 
training  himself,  and  without  any  enthusi- 
asm for  morality,  sends  his  son  to  the  very 
best  school,  just  as  he  buys  him  the  very 
best  clothes.  Fortunately  nearly  all  these 
schools  inculcate  Christian  manhood  —  the 


Private  Schools  and  Scholarship     45 

very  atmosphere  is  religious.  Thus  we  have 
the  paradox  of  a  boy  coming  to  college,  living 
absolutely  sober  and  straight,  taking  a  prom- 
inent part  in  prayer-meetings  and  reli- 
gious work;  and  his  parents  are  either 
frivolous  or  dissipated,  or  both.  An  under- 
graduate at  Yale  laid  before  me  in  all  sin- 
cerity this  problem  :  "I  do  not  want  to 
drink.  Young  as  I  am,  I  have  seen  many 
people  injured  by  excess,  and  I  would  rather 
not  drink  at  all.  But  what  am  I  to  do  ?  I 
don't  want  to  hurt  father's  feelings." 

It  is  quite  right  that  character  should 
be  placed  before  scholarship  —  character 
should  be  placed  before  everything  else. 
Yet  the  best  schools  are  unconsciously  in 
one  direction  working  against  scholarship. 
They  must,  of  course,  prepare  the  boy  to  pass 
his  college  examinations,  and  they  know  how 
to  do  it.  But  a  boy  may  pass  all  kinds  of 
examinations,  and  yet  have  no  real  love  of 
learning  and  no  ideal  of  scholarship.  Men 
of  the  world  and  jaunty  journalists  often 
ridicule  the  great  college  athletes,  and  ironi- 


46     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

cally  ask  if  the  half-back  and  the  pitcher 
understand  the  practical  value  of  a  college 
education.  They  shake  their  heads  over 
the  pictures  of  a  drop-kicker,  and  remark 
that  when  the  lad  gets  out  into  the  world, 
he  will  find  that  his  athletic  reputation  will 
not  help  him  in  earning  his  living.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  exactly  the  contrary 
is  the  case,  and  humorously  enough,  it  is 
particularly  the  case  in  those  fields  of  human 
endeavour  that  are  ostensibly  scholarly. 
The  shortest  cut  to  an  immediate  big  salary 
in  school-teaching  is  not  by  the  curriculum 
route,  but  through  the  foot-ball  gridiron. 
In  the  attempt  to  secure  a  good  position  as 
a  school-teacher,  the  valedictorian  stands 
absolutely  no  chance  whatever  against  the 
captain  of  the  football  team.  Every  year 
I  observe  the  same  curiosity :  three  or  four 
seniors,  intelligent  and  scholarly,  members 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  trying  hard  to  find  a 
position  to  teach  school,  and  in  the  end 
forced  to  accept  a  low  salary ;  while  two  or 
three  of  their  classmates,  whose  fame  rests 


Private  Schools  and  Scholarship     47 

solely  on  athletics,  have  an  embarrassment 
of  choice,  and  are  offered  really  extraordi- 
nary sums  to  teach  Latin,  or  English,  or 
Mathematics  or  History  in  excellent  private 
schools.  I  should,  therefore,  advise  all  young 
men  who  wish  to  teach,  not  to  neglect  their 
studies,  but  to  achieve  as  much  distinction 
in  athletics  as  their  bodily  frame  will  per- 
mit. It  is  a  great  financial  asset. 

The  constant  letters  that  I  receive  from 
school  principals  and  head-masters  all  say 
the  same  thing.  They  indicate  a  distrust 
of  pure  scholarship.  "What  I  want  is  a 
Man,  not  a  Scholar."  To  one  principal  I 
wrote  to  the  effect  that  the  prominent  under- 
graduate he  was  after  was  a  fine  fellow,  but 
had  no  intention  of  devoting  his  life  to 
teaching :  he  merely  wished  to  teach  for  two 
years  to  accumulate  a  sum  of  money,  and 
was  then  going  to  study  law.  "So  much 
the  better,"  came  the  immediate  reply; 
"  men  who  want  to  teach  are  useless.  Give 
me  the  all-around  good  fellow,  man  of  sense, 
physical  strength,  and  personal  charm.  The 


48     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

fact  that  he  does  not  want  to  become  a 
teacher  is  the  best  possible  qualification." 
What  then  are  we  to  expect  ?  If  gold  rust, 
what  shall  iron  do  ? 

I  remember  the  pathetic  reply  given  by 
one  scholarly  candidate  to  a  head-master. 
The  latter  asked  what  he  could  do  in  athlet- 
ics, and  the  poor  starveling  replied,  "I 
can  Yswim."  He  was  rejected.  Athletics, 
of  course,  give  young  teachers  a  great  influ- 
ence over  boys.  When  I  was  twenty-three 
years  old,  I  secured  a  position  to  teach  in  a 
private  school,  and  although  I  was  not 
chosen  on  my  athletic  record,  for  I  had  none, 
I  was  exceedingly  glad  when  I  came  to  per- 
form my  duties,  that  I  could  play  base-ball, 
football,  tennis,  and  hockey  as  well  as  any 
of  the  boys  I  taught  History.  I  had  always 
loved,  and  always  shall  love,  athletic  sports, 
and  this  fact  made  my  teaching  and  my 
discipline  comparatively  easy  for  me. 

The  great  difficulty  is  that  in  most  in- 
stances where  teachers  are  selected,  not  for 
their  scholarship,  or  for  their  love  of  teach- 
ing, but  for  their  foot-ball  and  base-ball 


Private  Schools  and  Scholarship     49 

records,  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  communi- 
cate to  the  boys  a  real  enthusiasm  for  learn- 
ing. A  man  cannot  give  what  he  does  not 
possess,  and  what  he  has  never  understood. 
The  result  is  that  many  of  our  colleges  are 
filled  with  splendid  young  men  for  whom  the 
curriculum  is  either  a  side  issue  or  a  positive 
nuisance.  I  see  no  escape  from  this  vicious 
circle  in  the  relations  of  fitting  schools  and 
colleges.  The  head-masters  must  have 
young  teachers  of  energy,  and  magnetism, 
whom  the  boys  will  love  and  follow;  but 
so  long  as  scholarship  is  at  a  discount  in  the 
selection  of  teachers,  we  cannot  wonder  at 
the  lack  of  enthusiasm  for  study  displayed 
by  undergraduates.  The  ideal  is  where 
the  athlete  is  also  a  very  high  scholar,  and 
this  fortunately  sometimes  occurs ;  but  I 
have  known  instances  where  the  athlete  was 
either  so  stupid  or  so  indifferent  that  he 
remained  for  four  years  close  to  the  foot  of 
the  class,  had  the  utmost  difficulty  in  getting 
his  degree,  and  was  then  immediately  offered 
an  enormous  salary  to  teach  ! 


50     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

I  am  not,  of  course,  blaming  the  head-mas- 
ters :  I  am  merely  trying  to  explain  a  situa- 
tion. And  it  must  be  remembered  that  great 
athletes  are  often  better  taught  in  athletics 
than  they  are  in  their  college  classrooms. 
They  know  what  good  teaching  and  faith- 
ful drill  mean,  and  perhaps  they  are  able  to 
apply  this  knowledge  when  it  comes  to 
teaching  something  like  Latin  or  English. 
Every  teacher  and  professor  in  the  country 
ought  to  go  at  least  once  to  foot-ball  practice, 
and  watch  the  patient,  energetic,  and  efficient 
coaching.  It  is  real  teaching.  I  learned  a 
great  deal  watching  a  Yale  graduate  who  had 
come  all  the  way  from  Minnesota  to  New 
Haven  to  give  instruction  in  foot-ball  to  a 
few  candidates.  He  took  two  men  to  a  cor- 
ner of  the  field,  and  for  over  an  hour  drilled 
them  on  one  minute  point  of  the  game.  He 
went  over  this  experiment  at  least  a  hun- 
dred times  with  absolutely  unflagging  energy 
and  enthusiasm.  I  saw  a  great  light,  and 
taught  English  literature  better  the  next 
morning. 


IV 

IMAGINATION     IN    TEACHING 

IF  a  teacher  wishes  success  with  pupils, 
he  must  inflame  their  imagination. 
The  lesson  should  put  the  classroom  under 
the  spell  of  an  illusion,  like  a  great  drama. 
Everything  abstract,  so  far  as  possible,  must 
be  avoided,  and  there  must  be  a  sedulous 
cultivation  of  the  concrete.  If  a  pupil  feels 
the  reality  of  any  subject,  feels  its  relation 
to  actual  life,  half  the  battle  is  gained. 
Terms  must  be  clothed  in  flesh  and  blood. 
When  I  was  a  very  small  boy,  my  mother 
told  me  that  every  night  when  I  went  to  bed  I 
must  surely  not  leave  out  the  stopple  in  the 
fixed  water  basin ;  to  neglect  this  was  danger- 
ous to  health,  she  said.  But  she  insisted  that 
it  was  still  more  important  —  I  don't  yet 
know  why  —  not  to  leave  any  standing  water 
in  the  basin.  These  two  things  she  impressed 

51 


52     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

on  my  mind.  I  immediately  invented  names 
for  the  two  dangers.  I  called  them  "Cap- 
tain Stoppleout"  and  "General  Standing 
Water,"  thus  indicating  not  only  that  they 
were  formidable  military  foes  to  be  over- 
come, but  indicating  also  the  difference  in 
their  rank. 

It  is  much  easier  to  teach  History  and  Liter- 
ature with  imagination  than  it  is  Mathe- 
matics ;  yet  there  are  great  teachers  of 
Mathematics  who  have  made  the  subject 
actually  alive.  They  are  rare.  One  reason 
why  I  was  a  dunce  in  Mathematics  was  be- 
cause I  could  not  get  an  imaginative  hold  of 
it.  Propositions  in  Geometry  interested  me 
not  in  the  least.  Suppose  ABC  did  equal 
DEFj  what  of  it  ?  Parallel  lines  do  not 
meet  —  who  cares  ?  If  I  could  only  have 
seen  them  as  two  dear  and  intimate  friends, 
doing  their  best  to  get  together,  struggling 
with  all  their  might  to  touch  each  other,  and 
yet  in  vain  —  with  the  empty  assurance  that 
they  would  meet  in  infinity,  a  kind  of  com- 
fortless Nirvana !  Professor  Andrew  W. 


Imagination  in  Teaching          53 

Phillips  of  Yale,  an  admirable  teacher  of 
Mathematics,  taught  the  subject  with  poetic 
imagination  and  irresistible  humour  and  ob- 
tained good  results  from  most  of  his  pupils. 
I  read  in  a  German  play  that  the  mathemati- 
cian is  like  a  man  who  lives  in  a  glass  room 
at  the  top  of  a  mountain  covered  with  eternal 
snow  —  he  sees  eternity  and  infinity  all 
about  him,  but  not  much  humanity. 

There  is  something  fundamentally  wrong 
about  the  teaching  of  foreign  languages  in 
our  American  schools.  I  cannot  give  the 
remedy,  because,  if  I  were  to  teach  these 
subjects,  even  supposing  that  I  had  the 
necessary  training  and  knowledge,  I  fear  I 
should  not  get  any  better  results.  I  studied 
Latin  six  years,  four  at  school  and  two  at 
college;  I  studied  Greek  five  years,  three 
at  school  and  two  at  college.  Both  subjects 
have  always  been  a  great  inspiration  to  me, 
and  I  would  not  be  without  this  foundation 
for  anything.  Yet  here  is  the  wretched 
truth.  Although  I  always  did  well  in  both 
studies,  and  received  as  high  marks  in  Latin 


54     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

and  Greek  as  I  obtained  low  ones  in  Mathe- 
matics, at  the  end  of  all  these  years  of  patient 
and  continuous  study  I  could  not  for  the  life 
of  me  read  a  page  of  easy  Latin  or  Greek  at 
sight.  As  Upton  Sinclair  has  said,  the  lines 
were  full  of  words  whose  appearance  was 
familiar,  but  whose  meaning  I  did  not  know. 
And  the  teaching  of  French  and  German  in 
schools  and  colleges  is  singularly  barren  of 
practical  results.  I  had  secured  a  comfort- 
able seat  in  a  railway  carriage  at  Nurem- 
berg, the  carriage  on  the  outside  having  an 
enormous  sign,  Nach  Munchen.  At  the  last 
moment  two  men,  father  and  son,  sprang  in 
breathlessly,  placed  their  bags  in  the  racks, 
and  then  suddenly  the  young  gentleman 
cried,  "Father,  does  nach  mean  not?" 
"Yes,"  said  the  parental  authority.  "Then 
we  are  in  the  wrong  train  !"  and  they  both 
began  feverishly  to  drag  down  their  baggage. 
I  quieted  their  fears,  by  telling  them  that  the 
train  was  going  to  Munich,  their  desired 
haven.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  it  would 
be  a  curious  railway  policy  to  mark  the  name 


Imagination  in  Teaching          55 

of  a  town  whither  a  train  was  not  going,  I 
was  a  little  surprised  that  so  familiar  a  word 
as  nach  was  unknown  to  Americans  travelling 
in  Germany.  I  said  to  the  handsome  youth, 
"I  suppose  you  have  never  studied  Ger- 
man ? "  "Oh,  yes,  I  have,"  and  he  told  me 
that  very  June  he  had  successfully  passed 
the  entrance  requirement  in  German  at  a 
great  Eastern  university  ! 

Faithful,  minute  grammatical  training 
is  an  absolute  essential  when  one  begins  to 
study  a  dead  or  living  tongue.  But  the 
letter  killeth.  Grammar  without  imme- 
diate and  specific  application  is  simply  an 
unrelated  exercise  of  memory.  How  faith- 
fully I  learned  the  pages  of  the  Latin  and 
Greek  grammar,  without  knowing  in  the 
least  what  to  do  with  my  store  of  facts  ! 
Once,  when  I  repeated  like  a  parrot  the  end- 
ings of  all  Latin  feminine  nouns  —  of  the 
third  declension,  was  it  ?  —  I  rebelled,  and 
remarked  in  the  schoolroom,  immediately 
after  my  triumphant  rapid-fire  perform- 
ance, "I  don't  see  the  use  of  all  this."  The 


56     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

teacher  gave  me  a  stinging  rebuke,  saying  it 
was  my  business  to  learn  what  I  was  told, 
and  not  to  question  methods  that  I  knew 
nothing  about.  I  can  remember  even  now 
the  prepositions  that  are  followed  by  the 
subjunctive,  and  while  dressing  in  the  morn- 
ing I  used  to  sing,  to  an  improvised  tune, 
those  that  govern  the  ablative  case.  The 
ablative  case,  God  save  the  mark  ! 
'When  we  studied  Caesar's  Commentaries 
on  the  Gallic  War,  a  wonderful  book,  written 
by  one  of  the  most  interesting  men  that  ever 
lived,  I  had  no  idea  that  Caesar  wrote  sense  : 
I  thought  he  wrote  only  sentences.  Once 
more,  the  grammar  is  essential ;  but  has  it 
importance  in  itself,  or  only  as  a  help  to 
the  understanding  ?  "All  Gaul  is  divided 
into  three  parts."  What  is  the  most  impor- 
tant fact  in  that  sentence  ?  Why,  the  most 
important  fact  is  just  what  it  says,  that  the 
country  is  divided  into  three  parts.  It 
would  be  a  tremendously  important  fact  if 
the  United  States  were  divided  into  three 
parts.  Yet  our  teachers  seemed  to  think  the 


Imagination  in  Teaching          57 

important  fact  in  that  striking  first  sentence 
was  that  Gaul  was  the  subject,  and,  there- 
fore, nominative.  The  grammatical  con- 
struction of  the  phrase  rather  than  its  living 
meaning  was  the  thing  invariably  insisted 
on,  although  we  were  reading  a  book  full  of 
history  and  human  nature. 

Some  time  later,  when  we  were  studying 
the  Civil  War  with  Mr.  Bernadotte  Perrin, 
he  recommended  us  to  read  Froude's  Sketch 
of  Cczsar.  I  read  this  with  extraordinary 
delight,  almost  with  shouts  of  joy.  What  a 
man  !  Later  I  saw  the  situation  clearly. 
Here  was  Caesar,  a  brilliant  statesman ; 
Cassius,  a  professional  politician ;  Brutus,  a 
Mugwump.  Brutus  was  the  type  of  sincere 
reformer,  whose  ideals  were  greater  than  his 
practical  judgment.  Wishing  to  reform  the 
state,  he  unconsciously  played  into  the  hands 
of  a  skilful  and  unscrupulous  professional 
politician,  Cassius,  and  between  them  they 
succeeded  in  killing  the  most  useful  man  in 
the  world. 

The  Latin  language  must  be  taught :  the 


58      Teaching  in  School  and   College 

teacher  cannot  spend  the  time  needed  for 
drill,  in  telling  interesting  and  entertaining 
historical  anecdotes.  But  a  word  in  season, 
how  good  is  it !  How  it  makes  the  whole 
subject  alive  and  real,  and  with  what  energy 
a  student  will  study  when  his  imagination 
is  deeply  touched  !  When  we  were  in  college 
one  of  our  Latin  teachers  was  Mr.  Ambrose 
Tighe,  now  a  lawyer  in  St.  Paul.  Besides 
teaching  us  Latin,  he  told  us  about  Roman 
history,  Roman  institutions,  Roman  poli- 
tics, Roman  personalities.  It  was  a  delight 
to  enter  his  class-room,  for  he  was  a  living 
inspiration.  But  in  doing  all  this,  he  in- 
curred the  displeasure  of  higher  powers,  and 
had  to  leave.  They  felt  he  was  too  "  popu- 
lar,' '  too  superficial,  and  that  he  shirked  the 
hard  work  of  teaching  Latin  in  order  to  give 
interesting  talks. 

But  the  teacher  who  teaches  History  or 
Literature,  and  does  not  set  fire  to  the  im- 
agination of  his  pupils,  is  a  failure.  Mr. 
James  Whitcomb  Riley  says  that,  when  a 
boy  at  school,  he  especially  hated  History. 


Imagination  in  Teaching  59 

"It  was  a  dull  and  juiceless  thing."  Such  a 
pupil  must  have  had  a  desperately  bad 
teacher  to  entertain  such  a  view  of  History. 
The  teacher  is  an  active  force,  not  a  tele- 
phone receiver.  In  the  high  school,  I 
remember  only  too  well  our  lessons  in  Greek 
History.  We  filed  into  the  room :  the 
accomplished  lady  at  the  desk  touched  a 
bell.  She  called  my  name.  I  rose  con- 
fidently, for  I  loved  History,  and  especially 
Greek  History.  She  said,  "Well,  begin." 
I  thought  I  had  not  heard  aright.  "What 
did  you  say?"  "I  said,  Begin";  and  she 
got  her  marking-book  ready.  To  the  next 
pupil,  she  said,  "Go  on."  These  were  the 
only  comments  she  ever  made.  Seeing  what 
was  wanted,  I  thereafter  learned  that 
Aristides  got  his  come-uppance  six  lines 
from  the  bottom  of  the  left-hand  page ; 
that  the  battle  of  Marathon  began  in  the 
second  paragraph  of  page  so-and-so ;  and  I 
obtained  eventually  a  good  mark.  Fortu- 
nately, she  could  not  kill  my  love  of  History, 
for  I  have  read  it  as  child  and  man  with 


60     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

sympathetic  imagination.  I  wept  bitterly 
over  the  downfall  of  the  Athenian  expe- 
dition to  Syracuse.  How  I  admired  Pe- 
rikles,  how  I  loved  Athens,  how  I  hated 
Sparta  !  With  what  raptures  of  delight  I 
followed  the  career  of  Epaminondas  !  To 
this  day,  I  cannot  think  of  the  battle  of  the 
Metaurus  in  Roman  history,  and  Hannibal's 
awful  disappointment,  without  a  sad  sink- 
ing of  the  heart.  And  although  I  have  not 
seen  for  thirty  years  the  school  history  of 
Rome  we  studied,  I  remember  word  for 
word  the  rather  rhetorical  flourish  with 
which  the  historian  described  Hannibal's 
last  hopeless  years  in  Italy.  "For  four  long 
years,  in  that  wild  and  mountainous  country, 
with  unabated  courage  and  astounding 
tenacity,  the  dying  lion  clung  to  the  land 
that  had  been  so  long  the  theatre  of  his 
glory." 

What  I  regret  is,  that,  owing  to  stupid  and 
incompetent  teaching,  my  schoolmates 
hated  History  with  'all  their  might. 

Take  the  sentence,  "Hannibal  crossed  the 


Imagination  in  Teaching          61 

Alps,  and  descended  into  Italy."  ';  Here  are 
eight  words,  and  how  shall  we  teach  them  so 
that  the  pupil  will  never  forget  this  extraor- 
dinary feat  ?  There  are  some  minds  to 
whom  the  most  important  facts  in  this  sen- 
tence are  that  Hannibal  is  the  subject,  the 
Alps  the  object,  and  so  on.  But  the  ordi- 
nary boy  or  girl  cannot  get  into  a  state  of 
violent  excitement  over  such  valuable  details. 
Who  was  Hannibal,  anyhow,  and  what  busi- 
ness had  he  in  the  Alps  ?  He  was  a  man 
from  Africa,  from  a  hot  climate :  such  a 
person  does  not  seem  qualified  for  member- 
ship in  the  Alpine  Club. ",  But  he  not  only 
crossed  the  Mediterranean,  without  the 
assistance  of  the  Hamburg-American  or 
Norddeutscher-Lloyd,  but  somehow  induced 
a  large  number  of  his  countrymen  to  come 
with  him  —  no  mean  undertaking  in  itself. 
Then  he  finally  reached  the  Alps,  and  they 
all  began  to  climb.  There  are  tourists  even 
to-day  who  complain  of  difficulties  ;  although 
the  roads  are  magnificent,  there  are  tunnels 
and  rack-and-pinions,  there  is  the  faithful 


62     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

and  omniscient  Baedeker,  there  are  every- 
where, high  and  low,  hotels  so  luxurious  that 
they  cost  you  ten  dollars  a  day,  board  and 
room  extra.  But  Hannibal  had  no  railways, 
no  inns,  no  tunnels,  no  roads,  and  no  guides, 
and  was  among  treacherous  seas  of  ice  and 
snow,  with  an  army  accustomed  to  a  quite 
different  climate  and  environment.  Some- 
how or  other,  he  persuaded  them;  he  led 
them  up,  and  led  them  down,  and  brought 
them  into  Italy  in  such  good  condition  that 
they  gave  a  terrific  thrashing  to  the  best- 
trained  soldiers  in  the  world,  who  were  all 
ready  to  receive  them.  When  the  eye  of 
the  imagination  follows  Hannibal  on  this 
expedition,  those  eight  words,  "Hannibal 
crossed  the  Alps,  and  descended  into  Italy," 
are  full  of  pictures.  We  are  forced  to  the 
conviction  that  Mommsen  was  right,  when 
he  wrote,  "Hannibal  was  a  great  man." 

English  Literature  above  all  must  be  taught 
with  the  imagination.  Is  it  not  unfortunate 
that  many  mature  lovers  of  literature  are 
afraid  to  have  the  great  English  classics 


Imagination  in  Teaching          63 

taught  in  the  schools,  simply  because  the 
boys  and  girls  may  acquire  a  permanent 
hatred  for  these  books  ?  The  only  possible 
objection  I  can  see  to  teaching  the  Bible  in 
every  public  and  private  school,  and  the  sub- 
ject is  so  important  that  I  am  willing  to  risk 
the  danger,  is  that  the  pupils  may  never 
read  the  great  book  again.  Over  and 
over  I  have  asked  college  students  their 
opinion  of  certain  English  classics,  and  their 
expression  is  one  of  disgust :  "Oh,  I  had  to 
study  that  at  school."  There  are  fortu- 
nately noble  exceptions  ;  such  teachers  as  the 
late  Mr.  George,  of  Newton,  really  inspired 
their  pupils. 

In  order  that  subjects  in  the  public  schools 
may  be  taught  with  vigour  and  with  imagi- 
nation, it  is  necessary  that  the  teacher 
should  not  be  overworked  and  underpaid. 
"It  is  the  curse  of  this  world  of  want  and 
need,"  said  Schopenhauer,  "that  everything 
must  serve  and  slave  for  these."  The 
teachers  in  our  schools,  the  vast  army  of 
faithful,  devoted  men  and  women,  who  wear 


64     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

out  their  lives  in  discipline  and  instruction, 
ought  to  be  provided  for  much  more  liber- 
ally than  is  now  the  case.  How  can  men 
and  women  teach  vigorously  day  after  day 
when  their  bodies  are  tired,  their  nerves 
overstrained,  and  their  salaries  insufficient 
to  support  them  decently  ?  These  persons, 
more  than  any  others,  hold  the  future  des- 
tiny of  our  country  in  their  hands.  I  wish 
that  those  who  have  never  taught  and  never 
give  a  thought  to  the  work  of  teachers  could 
be  put  in  charge  of  a  room  of  children  in  a 
district  school  just  one  hour.  Their  nerves 
would  be  in  a  frazzle.  Yet  there  are  thou- 
sands of  delicate  and  refined  women  who  do 
this  hour  after  hour,  day  after  day,  week 
after  week ;  and  then  many  of  them,  in  the 
summer  vacation,  when  they  ought  to  be  in 
a  sanatorium,  go  to  a  summer  school,  and 
study  strenuously,  such  is  their  zeal  for 
learning  and  self-improvement.  If  only 
the  money  that  is  squandered  on  the  build- 
ing of  battle  ships  and  firing  off  expensive 
powder  into  the  air  could  be  spent  on 


Imagination  in  Teaching          65 

teachers  !  If  the  vast  sums  wasted  on  mili- 
tary pensions  could  be  used  productively  ! 
The  teachers  in  our  public  schools  should  not 
be  required  to  teach  too  many  hours,  to 
manage  too  many  pupils,  and  their  salaries 
should  be  substantially  raised.  It  is  the 
best  possible  investment,  for  it  would  help 
many  who  are  in  desperate  straits,  and  it 
would  attract  skilled  and  efficient  men  and 
women.  And  it  would  be  well  if  every 
school-teacher,  after  a  certain  period  of  ser- 
vice both  in  public  and  in  private  schools, 
could  have  the  sabbatical  year  enjoyed  by 
many  college  professors.  In  those  rare 
cases  where  the  salary  is  high,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  it  could  be  given ;  but  in  most 
cases,  the  teacher  should  have  it  all.  The 
daily  grind  of  teaching  is  hard  and  wearing. 
If  a  teacher  had  every  seventh  year  free 
from  pupils  and  discipline,  and  could  go  to 
Europe  for  rest,  change,  and  study,  he  or  she 
would  be  so  much  richer  in  intelligence  and 
inspiration  on  the  return,  so  filled  with 
renewed  life  and  energy,  that  the  quality 


66     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

of  the  instruction  would  rise  enormously. 
There  is  nothing  quixotic  or  fantastic  about 
this.  It  would  be  a  solid,  permanent  advan- 
tage to  the  country,  and  it  would  brighten 
the  lives  of  those  who  are  devoting  them- 
selves to  the  most  important  service. 


THE    EFFICIENCY   OF   COLLEGE   TEACHING 

THE  brilliant,  original,  imaginative, 
and  forceful  school-teacher  is  at  one 
great  disadvantage  as  compared  with  the 
college  professor,  especially  if  he  teach  in  a 
school  where  boys  and  girls  are  prepared  for 
college.  He  must  lead  all  his  pupils  in  one 
definite  direction,  toward  the  strait  gate ; 
both  they  and  he  are  to  pass  through  a  test 
that  he  has  never  made,  concerning  the  value 
of  which  he  may  have  a  low  opinion,  but 
from  which  there  is  no  escape.  He  must 
hurry  his  flock  along,  even  as  a  professional 
guide  hustles  a  Cook's  tourist  party  through 
the  Louvre.  There  is  no  time  to  linger  over 
masterpieces,  to  indulge  in  independent 
speculation,  or  to  allow  any  individual  mem- 
ber to  take  up  the  precious  minutes  with 
questions  that  penetrate  beyond  the  pre- 
67 


68     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

scribed  limits.  The  teacher  must  inspire 
his  pupils,  yes  ;  but  he  must  above  all  inspire 
them  in  a  way  that  produces  immediate, 
practical,  and  minute  results.  In  some 
schools  the  independent  teacher  has  a  poor 
chance  to  show  his  independence,  for  he  is 
reduced  to  the  level  of  a  professional  coach. 
The  success  of  his  students  and  his  own 
success  as  a  teacher  are  gauged  by  the  pro- 
portion of  his  patients  that  survive  the 
operation  of  the  examiner's  knife.  This  ex- 
amination looms  up  forever,  like  a  terrible 
fate  drawing  daily  nearer,  and  there  are 
some  teachers  who  are  more  afraid  of  it  than 
their  pupils.  They  must  often  emphasise 
things  that  appear  to  them  trivial,  and  slight 
matters  that  appear  to  them  primary.  The 
college  professor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  com- 
paratively free,  is  the  king  of  his  classroom, 
and  can  indulge  himself  and  his  subjects  in 
all  sorts  of  intellectual  luxuries.  This  free- 
dom has  its  insidious  temptations  along  with 
its  wonderful  privileges. 

There  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  the  two 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     69 

most  efficient  institutions  of  education  in 
the  United  States  are  the  Military  Academy 
at  West  Point  and  the  Naval  Academy  at 
Annapolis.  In  the  first  place,  they  have 
the  prestige  of  an  exclusive  club  with  a  long 
waiting  list.  It  is  a  signal  honour  to  get  in 
at  all.  In  view  of  the  astonishing  results 
achieved  by  this  method,  I  sometimes  won- 
der why  there  are  not  more  colleges  in  Amer- 
ica, which,  instead  of  trying  with  all  their 
might  to  attract  as  many  students  as  pos- 
sible, do  not  make  a  fixed  limit  of  member- 
ship, the  excellent  custom  in  vogue  at  so 
many  high-grade  private  schools.  Even  the 
small  colleges  insist  on  the  enormous  advan- 
tages of  the  small  college,  in  the  apparent 
endeavour  to  secure  as  many  students  as 
possible  to  enjoy  these  advantages  ;  if  their 
advertising  were  successful,  they  would,  as 
Professor  Briggs  has  pointed  out,  imme- 
diately cease  to  be  small  colleges. 

I  have  visited  the  classrooms  at  both 
West  Point  and  Annapolis,  spent  some  time 
in  observation,  and  more  in  subsequent 


70     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

reflection.  The  students  are  divided  into  sec- 
tions of  from  seven  to  ten  men ;  each  youth 
knows  that  he  will  be  called  upon  to  recite 
every  day.  Impossible  to  loaf,  shirk,  dodge, 
or  bluff.  The  test  is  no  distant  thing  like  the 
day  of  judgment,  or  a  certain  thing  with  an 
uncertain  date,  like  death  :  it  is  something 
that  has  to  be  faced  rather  often  in  each  day. 
Tests  that  are  remote  lose  all  their  spurring 
power.  For  although  every  reader  of  this 
book  knows  that  he  must  die,  that  thought 
does  not  trouble  him  so  much  as  a  dentist 
appointment  or  an  unpaid  bill.  Every 
recitation  is  marked,  all  the  marks  are  pub- 
lished every  week,  no  favours  are  granted, 
no  excuses  accepted,  the  system  is  one  of 
ruthless  competition ;  a  lazy  or  indifferent 
student  cannot  live  in  that  atmosphere. 
Out  he  goes,  and  the  ranks  close  up.  The 
teachers  know  exactly  the  quality  of  the 
work  done  by  each  student;  and  some 
officer  knows  exactly  where  each  student  is 
from  the  moment  he  rises  in  the  morning 
till  he  retires  at  night,  for  the  poor  devil  has 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     71 

to  post  it  in  his  room.  The  men  are  happier 
under  this  strict  regime  than  might  be  im- 
agined, than  even  they  imagine  at  the  time. 
I  asked  an  officer  what  he  thought  of  it. 
He  said,  "Why,  when  we  were  cadets,  we 

thought  the  place  was  a  d d  workhouse, 

but  we  all  look  back  to  it  with  the  happiest 
recollection."  The  results  are  wonderful. 
Every  graduate  of  West  Point  or  Annapolis 
is  an  educated  man. 

The  boys  are  thoroughly  human  under  the 
uniform.  I  had  the  honour  of  giving  a 
course  of  lectures  to  about  two  hundred 
cadets  in  the  old  chapel  at  West  Point  — 
a  thing  that  has  a  humour  all  its  own,  for  no 
Quaker  who  ever  lived,  even  the  most  uncom- 
promising, has  hated  war  more  than  I  do. 
Talk  about  not  arbitrating  questions  of 
national  honour !  To  me  the  most  dis- 
honourable thing  that  any  nation  can  do  is 
to  engage  in  war  with  another.  Well,  I 
was  lecturing  in  that  beautiful  spot  one  beau- 
tiful day  in  May.  The  cadets  filed  in  rigidly, 
each  took  his  place,  took  out  his  note-book 


72     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

and  pencil,  and  gave  me  the  air  of  military 
attention.  I  stood  on  the  platform,  and 
I  was  the  only  man  in  the  room  who  could 
look  outside  on  the  green  grass,  through  the 
great  open  double  doors  at  the  rear  of  the 
hall.  In  the  middle  of  the  lecture,  two  huge 
setter  dogs  entered  at  that  portal,  and  I 
instinctively  felt  that  they  would  approach 
the  only  human  face  they  could  see.  They 
lost  no  time  about  it,  either,  but  joyously 
loped  down  the  centre  aisle,  and  mounted 
the  high  platform,  one  on  one  side  of  me, 
one  on  the  other.  I  looked  at  the  cadets ; 
they  were  young,  and  under  some  strain. 
But  not  a  man  moved,  not  a  man  smiled. 
They  sat  up,  if  possible,  more  rigidly  and 
stiffly  than  ever,  for  there  were  officers  in  the 
room.  Something  had  to  be  done  imme- 
diately to  save  the  situation,  and  Providence 
whispered  into  my  ears  the  right  thing  to 
say.  "Why,  these  are  Setters  and  I  ex- 
pected to  meet  only  West-Pointers  ! "  Then 
we  all  had  a  joyous  spontaneous  laugh  to- 
gether, officers,  cadets,  and  lecturer. 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     73 

A  year  or  two  ago,  on  an  intensely  hot 
evening  in  June,  I  went  into  a  hotel 
in  New  York  for  dinner.  It  was  so  hot  that 
J  secured  a  small  table  facing  an  open  win- 
dow, and  ate  in  peace  with  my  back  to  the 
room.  After  a  time,  four  young  gentlemen 
came  up  to  me,  and  introduced  themselves. 
I  supposed  they  must  be  recent  Yale  grad- 
uates, though  for  the  life  of  me,  I  could  not 
recall  their  faces.  They  said,  "We  are 
cadets  at  West  Point,  on  a  day's  furlough. 
We  saw  you  come  into  the  room,  and  we  did 
not  want  to  pass  out  without  speaking  to 
you."  This  may  seem  a  trivial  fact  to  re- 
cord, but  it  does  not  seem  so  to  me.  I  have 
a  glow  at  the  heart  now  when  I  think  of  it. 
One  of  the  pleasantest  things  about  college 
teaching  is  the  man-and-man  friendship 
that  the  teacher  forms  with  his  students, 
and  this  instance  was  especially  delightful, 
for  it  proved  to  me  that  I  had  not  at  West 
Point  lectured  to  a  collection  of  uniforms,  but 
had  spoken  to  human  hearts. 

Although    it    is    impossible   to    have    at 


74     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

college  the  discipline  that  prevails  at  West 
Point  and  Annapolis,  I  am  a  believer  in 
strict  college  discipline,  in  the  absolute  en- 
forcement of  regularity  of  attendance,  in 
daily  lessons,  daily  tasks,  regular  marking, 
and  semiannual  examinations.  The  Ameri- 
can college  youth  is  tractable,  amenable  to 
discipline,  and  willing  to  do  anything  rea- 
sonable that  is  exacted  of  him  by  a  teacher 
whom  he  respects.  The  one  thing  he  cannot 
forgive  in  a  professor  is  slyness,  unfairness, 
anything  not  absolutely  straight.  It  is, 
therefore,  of  the  utmost  importance  that  the 
students  should  understand  clearly  what  is 
expected  of  them,  and  that  each  individual 
pupil  should  feel  that  when  he  begins  a  new 
course,  he  has  exactly  the  same  chance  as 
every  other  individual  in  it.  No  past  record 
in  any  other  course  or  in  any  previous  year 
should  count  for  or  against. 

How  important  it  is  that  the  teacher 
should  control  himself,  and  be  a  man  worthy 
of  the  respect  of  his  students  !  We  teachers 
are  human,  we  make  many  mistakes,  and 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     75 

are  all  of  us  far  from  the  ideal.  But  how 
unfortunate  it  is  for  the  man  behind  the  desk 
to  be  shallow  or  spectacular ;  to  be  peevish 
or  constantly  irritable ;  to  fly  into  bursts  of 
anger ;  to  be  childish  and  picayune ;  to  be 
inordinately  vain  ;  to  be  fatuously  jocose  ; 
to  be  deadly  dull. 

Whether  it  is  owing  to  the  growth  of  col- 
lege athletics,  and  I  suspect  that  has  much 
to  do  with  it,  or  owing  to  the  general  advance 
in  civilisation  and  good  manners,  certain  it 
is  that  college  discipline  to-day  is  a  far  easier 
matter  for  the  president,  the  dean,  and 
the  professors  than  it  used  to  be.  Consider 
the  "personal  contact"  between  the  presi- 
dent and  the  students.  It  used  to  be  much 
more  close  in  certain  ways  than  it  is  now. 
A  recognised  part  of  the  president's  duties 
in  the  good  old  times  was  to  preserve  order 
by  physical  force.  Brown  University  is 
situated  at  the  top  of  a  steep  hill,  and  the 
president's  house  was  close  to  the  corner. 
One  night  the  president,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Ezekiel  Robinson,  heard  a  student  disturb- 


j6     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

ance  in  front  of  his  home.  He  was  tall, 
with  a  tremendous  reach  at  both  the  upper 
and  lower  extremities.  He  rushed  out,  and 
when  the  men  saw  him  coming,  they  started 
to  run.  All  got  away  but  one  luckless  indi- 
vidual, who  in  attempting  to  round  the  cor- 
ner received  a  terrific  kick  from  the  pursuing 
theologian,  which  highly  accelerated  his 
progress  down  the  hill.  Neither  student  nor 
president  thought  there  was  anything  incon- 
gruous in  this  close  personal  contact. 

Even  when  I  was  an  undergraduate,  a 
large  part  of  the  duty  of  professors  and  in- 
structors was  to  maintain  order.  Unpopular 
tutors  had  their  windows  smashed  by  hard 
missiles,  so  that  one  tutor,  on  being  asked 
what  his  salary  was,  replied,  "It  is  one  thou- 
sand dollars,  with  coal  thrown  in."  I  re- 
member one  tutor  rushing  out  in  his  night- 
gown, in  the  attempt  to  disperse  students 
gathered  about  a  bonfire.  And  it  was  not  an 
unfamiliar  spectacle  to  see  a  college  instruc- 
tor standing  behind  an  elm  tree  in  the  night, 
taking  down  the  names  of  students  in  a  note- 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     77 

book.  All  this  kind  of  personal  contact  has 
vanished  ;  I  should  think  it  incredible  it  ever 
existed,  did  I  not  distinctly  remember  it. 

But  the  necessity  for  discipline  remains, 
and  the  discipline  should  remain  with  it. 
Records  of  attendance  on  all  college  reci- 
tations and  lectures  should  be  faithfully  kept, 
and  irregularity  immediately  punished.  It  is 
vain  to  expect  that  students  will  attend  regu- 
larly without  rules  and  penalties.  I  suspect 
that  not  every  professor  would  attend  regu- 
larly, if  it  made  no  difference  with  his  college 
standing.  What  kind  of  training  for  life  do 
students  receive  in  institutions  where  they 
are  never  forced  to  keep  their  engagements  ? 
Is  such  negligence  fair  to  their  future,  or 
just  to  the  parents  who  have  placed  them 
in  our  keeping  ? 

I  believe  in  regular  assignments  of  lessons, 
and,  in  recitations,  regular  marking.  An 
Oxford  student  attended  one  of  my  exer- 
cises in  a  course  in  Elizabethan  Drama,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  hour  he  said,  "Why  do  you 
give  out  a  regular  lesson  ?  It  seems  a  bit 


78     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

childish  and  limited.  Why  don't  you  just 
mention  the  names  of  a  number  of  valuable 
and  stimulating  books,  and  let  them  read  for 
themselves  ?"  I  replied,  "Of  course  I  do 
that,  too.  But  every  man  has  a  regular  task 
assigned — otherwise  the  majority,  even  with 
the  best  of  intentions,  might  not  do  any 
work  at  all.  Do  you  work  at  Oxford  ?" 
"Oh,  I  never  do  any  work  in  term,  there 
is  so  much  going  on,  you  know.  But 
I  read  in  vacations."  He  was  a  clever  and 
ambitious  man,  but  he  confessed  to  me  that 
the  majority  of  Oxford  students  did  not 
work  either  in  term  or  in  vacation.  What- 
ever may  be  the  custom  in  England  or  in 
Germany,  our  American  colleges  should  not 
neglect  the  many  for  the  few. 

And  I  believe  in  the  marking-book,  and  in 
the  daily  marking  of  recitations  and  of  writ- 
ten work.  I  know  that  to  many  professors 
this  seems  undignified,  out  of  keeping  with 
the  right  relations  between  students  and  pro- 
fessors in  a  great  university.  I  do  not  share 
this  sentiment.  A  student  from  an  Ameri- 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     79 

can  institution  where  the  marks  are  never 
given  or  heard  of  except  at  fixed  examina- 
tions visited  Yale,  and  told  me  it  seemed  to 
him  very  schoolboyish  for  the  instructor  to 
make  a  mark  in  his  book  after  each  recita- 
tion. Whether  it  is  schoolboyish  or  gentle- 
manly, is  not  the  point ;  every  system  should 
be  judged  by  its  results.  I  am  convinced 
that  the  best  way  to  get  faithful  work  out  of 
students  is  to  mark  them  regularly.  The 
only  real  objection  to  the  marking-book  is 
the  impossibility  of  absolute  fairness.  It  is 
a  rough  and  exceedingly  crude  method  of 
appraisal,  but,  unfortunately,  the  best  I 
know. 

And  I  believe  in  written  examinations. 
Imperfect  as  they  are,  they  are  a  distinct 
test  of  knowledge.  We  hear  a  great  deal 
about  the  nervous  terror  of  pupils  at  a  writ- 
ten examination,  the  impossibility  of  their 
writing  what  they  know,  and  many  com- 
plaints of  a  like  nature.  But,  as  a  rule,  when 
a  student  has  done  well  in  a  subject,  he  is  not 
afraid  of  the  test.  Those  who  are  naturally 


80     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

stupid,  or  have  neglected  their  work,  are,  of 
course,  afraid  of  the  examination,  as  they 
ought  to  be.  The  test  is  then  important, 
for  an  examination  is  meant  to  reveal  igno- 
rance as  well  as  knowledge.  I  was  always  in 
terror  of  mathematical  examinations,  owing 
to  my  stupidity  in  the  subject ;  but  I  rather 
enjoyed  those  in  studies  where  I  excelled. 
I  think  that  all  colleges  should  require  en- 
trance examinations,  and  regular  term  exam- 
inations during  the  course. 

I  believe  that  the  marks  students  receive 
on  examinations  and  on  the  completion  of  a 
course  should  be  made  known  to  them. 
Some  teachers  seem  to  be  mortally  afraid 
that  students  will  study  for  marks,  but  my 
fear  is  that  not  enough  of  them  will.  If 
an  intelligent  student  exalts  his  mark  above 
real  knowledge  of  the  subject,  this  is  unfor- 
tunate. But  to  excel  in  college  scholarship 
is  surely  an  honourable  ambition,  and  one 
that  needs  stimulation.  If  a  student  feels 
pride  in  high  standing,  I  am  personally  very 
much  pleased.  It  is  the  most  natural  thing 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     81 

in  the  world,  when  a  student  has  written  an 
examination  paper,  and  handed  it  in,  that  he 
should  obtain  a  definite  result.  There  should 
be  no  air  of  mystery  about  it.  Every  man 
who  fires  a  shot  at  a  target  wants  to  know 
whether  he  has  hit  it  or  not.  No  teacher 
should  be  bothered  by  continual  requests  for 
marks,  but  that  is  a  matter  of  detail,  which 
any  sensible  person  can  settle  satisfactorily. 
An  examination  should  not  be  a  cleverly 
prepared  trap  to  catch  the  students  :  on  the 
other  hand  it  must  not  be  too  obvious.  The 
difficulty  of  preparing  a  fair  examination 
paper  in  a  large  college  is  enormously  in- 
creased by  the  number  of  diabolically  clever 
private  tutors  and  coaches,  undergraduate 
and  professional  "lectures,"  digests,  and 
other  first  aids  to  the  injured.  These  make 
it  even  more  necessary  to  mark  daily  work, 
and  to  force  the  average  student  to  believe 
that  no  final  spurt  of  energy  can  take  the 
place  of  systematic  daily  effort.  There  are 
some  tutors  so  clever  I  believe  they  could  put 
a  dog  through  an  examination  —  for  some 


82     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

of  their  successful  patients  seem  to  have  less 
than  canine  intelligence.  The  examination 
by  itself  is  not  an  ideal  test.  The  teacher 
should  do  everything  he  can  to  frown  upon 
digests,  special  lectures,  and  all  short  cuts 
to  knowledge,  as  being  inconsistent  with 
true  scholarship.  ? 

Teachers  should  mark  strictly  and  fairly, 
but  a  "low  marker"  is  not  necessarily  the 
sign  either  of  a  strict  disciplinarian  or  a  good 
teacher.  Some  teachers  seem  to  think  the 
main  aim  should  be  to  flunk  as  many  stu- 
dents as  possible,  and  many  young  teachers 
are  really  proud  of  a  long  list  of  failures, 
thinking  that  it  shows  a  commendable  stand- 
ard. As  a  matter  of  fact,  if  a  teacher 
taught  a  subject  a  half  year,  and  then  over 
fifty  per  cent  of  his  pupils  failed  to  pass  the 
examination,  it  would  seem  as  though  he 
were  rather  unimpressive,  rather  inefficient. 
A  teacher  should  not  be  afraid  to  mark  some 
papers  very  high,  and  others  very  low. 
Those  who  give  the  whole  class  an  aver- 
age mark  break  the  hearts  of  ambitious 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     83 

students,  and  encourage  the  lazy  in  their 
sins. 

A  mark  once  given  should  stay,  should 
never  be  changed  or  cancelled.  If  the 
students  know  that  in  advance,  they  will 
never  ask  for  remittance.  It  is  very  painful 
to  tell  a  college  senior  that  he  has  failed  in 
your  course,  and  cannot  have  his  degree  at 
Commencement.  Do  not  do  this  until  you 
know  that  he  does  not  deserve  to  pass,  and 
then  stand  firm.  It  is  greatly  to  the  credit 
of  the  young  gentlemen  that  I  have  taught, 
that  unspeakably  bitter  as  this  disappoint- 
ment is  to  them  and  to  their  families,  I  have 
never  lost  a  friend  by  it. 

I  think  that  wherever  it  is  in  any  way 
possible  professors  should  themselves  read 
and  grade  all  the  examination  papers  that 
their  students  write  in  their  courses,  and  all 
the  written  work  that  they  hand  in.  I  know 
that  many  professors  regard  this  as  a  waste 
of  valuable  time  and  energy,  and  hand  the 
job  over  to  assistants.  But  the  students 
take  more  interest  in  a  course,  and  feel  more 


84     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

confident  of  the  accuracy  of  the  results, 
when  the  professor  who  hears  their  recita- 
tions or  who  lectures  to  them  reads  and 
marks  their  work  himself.  Some  students 
regard  the  whole  thing  as  blind  chance  when 
their  papers  are  marked  by  a  young  assis- 
tant who  never  is  seen.  "What  did  you 
draw  on  that  exam  ?"  I  often  hear  one 
student  ask  another,  as  though  it  were  a 
game  of  poker.  When  I  was  a  graduate 
student  at  Harvard,  I  studied  Shakespeare 
under  Professor  Child,  the  foremost  Eng- 
lish scholar  that  America  has  produced.  If 
ever  a  man's  time  was  important  for  study 
and  research  and  publication,  his  was.  But 
although  there  were  one  hundred  and  twenty 
students  in  this  course,  I  was  impressed  by 
the  fact  that  he  read  and  marked  each  exam- 
ination paper  himself,  nay,  each  question 
on  the  examination.  When  I  got  my  book 
back,  I  read  it  with  great  interest. 

I  do  not  believe  that  a  professor  can  read 
through  a  long  examination  in  History  or 
Literature,  and  give  a  general  estimate  of 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     85 

it  that  will  be  correct.  It  is  different,  of 
course,  in  Mathematics,  where  a  glance  at 
each  question  may  be  sufficient.  A  pro- 
fessor of  Mathematics  told  me  that  he  never 
thought  he  was  reading  with  sufficient  speed, 
unless  he  could  always  keep  one  paper  in  the 
air.  That  method  will  not  do  in  Literature. 
My  own  scheme,  after  trying  others,  is  this. 
The  perfect  mark  at  Yale  is  400.  I  put  eight 
questions  on  the  paper,  and  the  students 
know  that  each  question  will  count  fifty 
points.  If  there  are  ten  subdivisions  of  a 
question,  each  tentacle  counts  five  points  ;  if 
there  are  five,  each  counts  ten.  Then  I 
hire  an  assistant  to  do  the  mathematics.  I 
read  each  answer,  speaking  out  the  mark  as 
I  read.  The  assistant  adds  as  I  progress, 
and  the  moment  the  paper  is  read  through 
I  know  the  exact  mark  for  the  total,  thus 
saving  half  the  time  and  energy  it  would  take 
if  I  did  the  mathematics  myself,  and,  in  my 
case,  ensuring  greater  accuracy.  The  books 
are  all  returned  to  the  students,  with  each 
question  marked  in  my  own  hand.  If  a 


86     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

teacher  reads  a  paper  right  through  and  then 
makes  a  general  estimate,  he  may  not  have 
observed  that  there  was  one  question  not 
answered  at  all ;  or  he  may  be  unduly  preju- 
diced by  very  stupid  or  very  brilliant  answers 
to  one  or  two  queries.  Now  I  do  not  think 
there  is  a  teacher  who  hates  to  read  papers 
more  than  I  do.  I  have  many  students,  and 
the  semiannual  task  is  a  terrible  burden.  I 
loathe  it  with  an  unspeakable  loathing;  it 
is  the  only  part  of  my  work  that  I  abso- 
lutely detest.  And  yet  I  believe  it  to  be 
vitally  important  and  richly  productive. 
Occasionally,  too,  there  are  delightful  oases 
in  the  desert.  On  an  examination  paper 
that  I  set  in  Browning,  a  subdivision  of  a 
question  concerned  the  biography  of  the 
poet.  A  student  wrote  :  "Browning  died 
in  1889.  In  that  same  year  I  was  born. 
What  a  shameful  exchange  ! " 

Wherever  public  opinion  will  permit  it,  I 
believe  in  the  so-called  honour  system  in 
examinations.  There  is  much  less  cheating 
in  college  work  now  than  there  used  to  be, 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     87 

partly  owing  to  the  general  and  unquestion- 
able moral  advance  in  student  life,  partly 
owing  to  the  more  dignified  and  at  the  same 
time  more  intimate  relation  between  teacher 
and  taught.  Every  student  is  a  natural- 
born  casuist,  as,  perhaps,  we  all  are  where  our 
personal  interests  are  concerned,  and  one 
must  accept  that  fact ;  but  if  the  class  and 
the  professor  understand  each  other,  I  am 
sure  that  the  honour  system  is  the  most  satis- 
factory. Fortunately  or  unfortunately  the 
average  student  cares  more  for  the  good  opin- 
ion of  his  classmates  than  he  does  for  that  of 
the  faculty,  and  strong  public  sentiment 
exerts  a  mighty  pressure.  I  have  used 
the  honour  system  with  my  students  for  a 
number  of  years,  and  with  excellent  results. 
Immediately  the  sceptic  asks,  "How  do  you 
know  ?"  The  answer  is  really  very  simple. 
There  is  a  check  on  the  honour  system, 
as  there  should  be  on  all  systems.  I 
should  have  little  respect  for  a  student 
who  told  me  the  name  of  another  whom  he 
saw  cheating ;  we  want  no  spies  and  no  tell- 


88     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

tales  in  our  classes.  But  I  always  tell  my 
students  in  advance  that  unless  the  honour 
system  prevents  cheating,  it  is  worthless, 
and  that  if  by  chance  any  man  should  ob- 
serve evil-doing,  it  is  his  duty  to  tell  me, 
without  giving  any  names,  that  there  are 
those  who  take  advantage  of  their  oppor- 
tunities. This  seems  to  me  a  simple  and 
effective  check. 

It  is  exceedingly  unfortunate  that  stu- 
dents who  will  not  lie  to  each  other  or  steal 
from  one  another  should  think  it  trivial  to 
lie  to  the  faculty  or  to  steal  a  good  mark 
from  the  faculty,  which  they  have  not  earned. 
Cases  of  this  undoubtedly  occur  every  year 
in  every  college,  in  connection  with  the  hand- 
ing in  of  written  work.  And  there  are  indi- 
gent students,  whose  tuition  is  remitted 
because  they  are  poor  and  struggling 
for  an  education,  who  partially  support 
themselves  by  writing  compositions  for 
wealthy  classmates,  thus  exhibiting  ingrat- 
itude, disloyalty,  and  treachery  toward  the 
institution.  In  all  these  matters  there  is 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     89 

decided  improvement  as  compared  with  the 
good  old  times,  but  flagrant  cases  occasion- 
ally jar  the  optimism  of  the  teacher.  A 
man  whose  classmates  would  ostracise  him 
if  he  cheated  to  win  a  prize,  will  lose  no  pop- 
ularity or  standing  by  cheating  to  save  him- 
self from  failure  —  which  means,  of  course, 
that  the  lad  has  no  real  standard  of  virtue 
at  all,  his  virtue  being  dependent  simply  on 
the  size  of  the  temptation.  The  true  stand- 
ard of  virtue  should  always  be  within  a 
man's  heart,  never  determined  by  external 
circumstances.  In  order  really  to  know 
whether  a  man  is  virtuous,  good-natured,  or 
gentlemanly,  we  must  see  him  tested.  One 
who  scornfully  rejects  a  little  bribe,  but 
accepts  a  big  one,  is  surely  not  virtuous ; 
one  whose  good-nature  turns  sour  in  adver- 
sity is  not  really  good-natured ;  a  man 
whose  politeness  does  not  survive  a  dis- 
appointment is  not  a  true  gentleman. 

In  general,  and  except  in  special  emer- 
gencies, it  is  best  for  the  teacher  both  in 
school  and  college  to  take  a  boy's  word  of 


go     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

honour,  even  if  the  circumstances  seem  sus- 
picious. It  is  better  to  let  three  or  four 
students  lie  to  you  than  to  punish  an  inno- 
cent pupil  with  denial  of  his  word,  or  with 
suspicion  of  his  honesty.  Nothing  rankles 
in  a  young  man's  heart  more  venomously 
than  unjust  suspicion  or  unfair  treatment 
from  his  teacher.  I  well  remember  the 
crafty  and  sceptical  expression  on  the  faces  of 
some  of  my  teachers  when  I  was  telling  them 
only  the  exact  truth.  I  wish  in  vain  that  I 
could  forget  these  experiences.  When  I  was 
a  freshman  I  had  an  attack  of  chills  and 
fever,  with  a  high  temperature ;  it  was 
simply  out  of  the  question  for  me  to  attend 
college  classes  :  I  had  to  go  to  bed.  Yet  in 
two  days  I  was  well,  and  reported  to  my 
college  professor  that  I  had  been  ill,  and 
hoped  that  my  absence  would  be  excused. 
He  looked  at  me  with  a  sceptical  smile,  and  I 
saw  he  did  not  believe  me.  I  had  to  take  the 
penalty,  and  went  away  with  a  dull  rage  in 
my  heart.  On  another  occasion,  a  wife  of  one 
of  the  professors  had  wandered  off,  out  of 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     91 

her  mind,  and  volunteer  students  went  in 
search  of  her.  I  became  lost  in  the  woods, 
and  was  drenched  to  the  skin  by  the  winter 
rain.  I  did  not  reach  my  room  until  ten 
in  the  evening,  and  was  too  exhausted  to 
study.  The  next  morning  I  told  my  instruc- 
tor the  facts,  not  expecting  that  he  would 
believe  me.  To  my  surprise  and  delight 
he  accepted  my  story  instantly,  and  said 
kindly,  "You  must  have  been  very  tired." 
Do  you  think  I  shall  ever  forget  that  man  ? 
It  is  curious  to  find  that  a  student  who  is 
perhaps  almost  overpunctilious  in  every- 
thing else  will  sometimes  cheat  in  written 
work.  I  remember  one  extraordinary  case. 
I  was  playing  a  golf  match  at  the  Country 
Club  with  an  undergraduate :  it  was  a 
match  we  were  each  of  us  keen  to  win,  for 
it  was  the  final  for  the  club  championship. 
On  one  of  the  holes  we  played  long  shots  out 
of  the  fair  green ;  his  ball  went  into  the 
bunker,  mine  flew  over.  When  I  reached 
the  bunker,  I  passed  on  ahead,  and  in  a 
moment  or  two,  he  came  up,  and  said  he 


92     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

had  lost  the  hole.  "Impossible,  we  haven't 
reached  the  green,"  said  I.  But  he  ex- 
plained that  as  he  entered  the  bunker,  one 
of  his  clubs  accidentally  fell  out  of  the  bag 
and  into  the  sand,  and  although  he  had  not 
even  tried  to  address  the  ball,  and  although 
there  was  no  possibility  of  my  having  seen 
what  had  occurred,  he  declared  that  he  had 
lost  the  hole.  A  short  time  after  this  event, 
the  same  young  gentleman  submitted,  in 
one  of  his  college  courses,  a  theme  written 
by  another  hand.  He  was  caught,  and  sus- 
pended from  college  six  months. 

Professors  should  not  only  insist  on  regu- 
lar work  from  the  student,  they  should  in- 
sist that  it  appear  on  the  date  previously 
announced.  I  visited  a  large  American 
university  and  entered  the  classroom  of  a 
famous  lecturer.  There  were  about  seventy 
students  present.  The  lecturer  announced  : 
"Your  theses  are  all  due  to-day.  Please 
bring  them  to  the  desk."  There  was  a 
moment's  painful  silence,  and  then  one 
undergraduate  walked  forward  and  de- 


Efficiency  of  College  Teaching     93 

posited  his  essay,  amid  general  laughter,  in 
which  the  professor  joined.  "One  swallow 
does  not  make  a  summer,"  he  remarked 
pessimistically.  I  do  not  care  how  distin- 
guished an  authority  he  was,  in  this  instance 
he  proved  himself  to  be  a  slovenly  teacher. 
Students  will  not  rebel  when  fairly  notified 
in  advance,  but  they  will  always  take  advan- 
tage of  a  teacher  who  does  not  mean  what 
he  says.  In  the  training  of  college  under- 
graduates, it  is  just  as  important  to  empha- 
sise punctuality  in  work  as  it  is  quality. 
They  are  more  tractable  in  this  respect  than 
any  other  class  of  persons.  They  will 
adhere  even  to  minute  regulations,  if  the 
regulations  are  clearly  and  definitely  ex- 
plained to  them  in  advance,  with  the  rea- 
sons why  the  regulations  are  made.  A 
teacher  who  accepts  "late  themes"  prepares 
himself  for  all  sorts  of  vexatious  difficulties, 
and  neglects  an  important  part  of  necessary 
discipline. 


VI 

EDUCATION   AND    INSTRUCTION 

A  GOOD  teacher  must  first  of  all  know  his 
subject :  that  is  axiomatic.  I  might 
study  the  art  of  teaching  all  my  life  and  yet 
I  should  never  be  able  to  teach  Mathematics 
or  any  other  science.  Butbesides  knowingthe 
subject,  the  teacher  must  understand  some- 
thing about  human  nature,  must  know  his 
pupils.  A  teacher  teaches  some  one  as  well 
as  some  thing.  This  is,  of  course,  the  reason 
why  head-masters  of  schools  secure  athletes 
and  popular  society  men  to  teach  their  boys  : 
these  may  not  be  authorities  in  any  special 
field  of  learning,  they  may  not  fully  under- 
stand the  subject,  but  they  always  under- 
stand the  object.  A  man  who  has  a  doctor's 
degree  may  or  may  not  be  a  good  teacher  — 
that  remains  to  be  proved.  A  theologian  or 
Hebrew  scholar  maybe  a  miserable  preacher. 

94 


Education  and  Instruction          95 

How  often  I  have  seen  a  learned  doctor  of 
divinity  alienating  his  audience  with  long- 
winded  dulness,  whilst  utterly  unaware 
of  the  fact !  There  should  always  be  vital 
communication  between  the  preacher  and 
the  listener,  between  the  teacher  and  the 
taught. 

The  real  test  of  a  teacher  is  not  his  success 
with  pupils  who  are  clever  and  eager  to 
learn,  though  he  should  always  command  the 
sincere  respect  of  these  chosen  few.  His 
test  comes  with  the  indifferent  majority, 
with  those  who  don't  care,  with  those  who 
don't  want  to  learn.  It  is  a  delight  to  a 
teacher  to  have  pupils  of  natural  capacity 
and  intellectual  background,  who  respond 
instantly  to  his  best  thought ;  but  it  is  a  still 
greater  delight  to  see  the  first  signs  of  intelli- 
gence in  a  dull  block  of  clay,  to  see  attention 
replace  indifference,  and  witness  the  birth 
of  intellectual  curiosity.  It  may  mean 
salvation. 

The  average  group  of  students  do  not  troop 
into  the  class  room  eager  to  learn,  their 


96     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

minds  full  of  the  subject.  They  are  think- 
ing of  a  hundred  other  things  —  of  what  they 
did  yesterday,  of  a  letter  they  have  just  read, 
of  the  sporting  news  in  the  morning  paper, 
of  a  pleasant  engagement  immediately  after 
class,  of  a  tennis  match  for  which  they  are 
already  clad.  There  is  no  open  macada- 
mised road  between  the  teacher's  mind  and 
theirs  :  there  are  enormous  obstacles,  which 
must  be  immediately  cleared,  before  any- 
thing can  be  accomplished  at  all. 

The  interest  of  the  class  must  be  instantly 
aroused  and  maintained  until  the  end  of  the 
period.  This  is  the  first  step,  the  first  all- 
important  problem.  The  teacher  must 
drive  out  of  their  minds  all  other  things 
and  substitute  an  absorbing,  jealous  interest 
in  the  lesson.  It  is  not  easy  to  teach  on  the 
day  before  or  day  after  a  holiday,  on  the  morn- 
ing following  a  presidential  election,  on  the 
eve  or  afterglow  of  a  great  foot-ball  game. 
But  it  can  be  done,  and  without  the  slight- 
est allusion  to  the  events  that  fill  the  stu- 
dents' minds  as  they  enter  the  room.  A 


Education  and  Instruction          97 

teacher  is  an  advocate.  He  is  like  a  lawyer 
before  the  jury  —  if  he  does  not  interest  his 
audience,  he  has  lost  his  case.  Minute  and 
exact  accuracy  must  sometimes  be  sacrificed 
for  emphasis.  By  the  time  the  fact  lodges 
in  the  pupil's  skull,  it  will  not  be  unduly 
disproportionate.  A  teacher  who  teaches 
with  constant  parentheses,  qualifications, 
and  trivial  explanations  will  never  make  any 
definite  impression.  As  Professor  Louns- 
bury  has  said,  "The  capacity  of  the  human 
mind  to  resist  the  introduction  of  knowledge 
cannot  be  overestimated." 

There  is  something  distinctly  histrionic 
about  the  teacher's  art,  which  is  one  reason 
why  it  is  so  exciting  to  those  who  love  it. 
Every  recitation  should  be  an  event.  Many 
people  think  a  teacher's  life  must  be  monot- 
onous, made  up  of  dull  routine,  because 
he  teaches  the  same  subject  and  the  same 
lessons  over  and  over  again.  Nothing  could 
be  farther  from  the  truth.  I  know  of  no 
profession  more  exciting,  more  stirring,  more 
thrilling  than  teaching.  No  one  believes 


98     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

that  an  actor  who  acts  Hamlet  finds  it 
monotonous,  although  he  repeats  not  only 
the  same  words,  but  the  same  gestures,  the 
same  attitudes,  the  same  intonations.  There 
is  no  monotony  in  teaching  the  same  lesson 
to  different  pupils,  not  if  the  teacher  is  a  good 
actor.  In  my  first  year  at  Yale,  I  taught 
short  lessons  in  King  Henry  IV,  Part  7,  to 
twelve  different  divisions  :  it  was  just  as 
interesting  the  twelfth  time  as  the  first. 
In  fact,  the  first  time  was  a  kind  of  dress 
rehearsal,  and  I  think  I  did  better  the  longer 
I  kept  at  it. 

The  main  object  of  a  recitation,  with  ques- 
tion, answer,  and  discussion,  should  be  to 
educate :  the  chief  object  of  a  lecture  must 
be  instruction.  In  undergraduate  work,  ed- 
ucation is  more  important  than  instruction, 
and  therefore  I  believe  that  more  lasting 
good  is  accomplished  by  recitations  —  the 
give  and  take  —  than  by  lectures.  The 
ideal  recitation  is,  of  course,  with  a  rather 
small  class, —  not  too  small  to  take  away  the 
spur  of  competition  and  the  excitement  of 


Education  and  Instruction          99 

numbers,  —  but  small  enough  for  each  man 
in  the  room  to  feel  the  teacher's  personality 
and  to  know  that  there  is  a  chance  for  him 
to  display  knowledge  and  ignorance.  For 
this  reason,  it  is  always  best,  even  though 
it  involves  enormous  expense  and  the  multi- 
plication of  teachers,  to  divide  large  classes 
into  small  divisions ;  to  have  the  same  les- 
sons taught  by  several  teachers,  and  to  have 
the  same  teacher  teach  the  same  lesson 
several  times.  It  pays.  The  ideal  object 
of  the  instructor  is  to  educate  every  student 
in  the  room,  to  "educe  the  man,"  as  Brown- 
ing says. 

Yet  recitations  should  always  teach, 
should  always  give  some  instruction.  Every 
student  should  actually  know  more  about 
the  subject  at  the  end  of  the  hour  than  he 
did  at  the  beginning.  The  teacher  must 
not  be  a  mere  hearer  of  recitations.  He 
should  not  exclusively  confine  himself  to 
discovering  whether  or  not  the  pupils  have 
made  sufficient  preparation.  In  many  of 
our  recitations  at  school  and  college  we 


ioo     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

never  expected  to  learn  anything;  never 
did,  anyhow :  we  simply  answered  formal 
questions.  So  fixed  was  this  idea  in  our 
minds,  that  our  first  interview  with  a  new 
instructor  in  the  Hartford  High  School,  Mr. 
Winfred  R.  Martin,  one  of  the  greatest 
teachers  I  ever  knew,  was  not  only  disastrous 
to  us,  but  we  nearly  broke  out  into  open 
rebellion.  He  asked  us  things  that  were 
not  in  the  notes  !  Later  we  found  him  a 
constant  and  powerful  inspiration.  Even 
at  that  early  age  we  obtained  from  him  a 
notion  of  the  meaning  of  true  scholarship. 
He  was  and  is  a  profound  and  original 
scholar,  a  man  of  varied  and  amazing 
learning,  and  we  respected  him  for  it. 

But  in  many  of  our  classes  the  conven- 
tional method  of  the  so-called  teacher  re- 
acted unfavourably  on  us.  Suppose  the 
lesson  was  in  Latin.  When  one  student 
was  reciting,  all  the  others  who  had  not  yet 
been  called  up  were  reading  ahead,  thinking 
it  might  be  their  turn  next.  As  soon  as  a 
man  recited,  he  retired  into  his  own  thoughts, 


Education  and  Instruction        101 

paid  no  further  attention  to  the  subject, 
slept,  or  read  a  novel.  We  had  teachers 
whose  sole  method,  invariable  as  fate,  was 
as  follows:  "Jones:  scan;  that  will  do. 
Brown :  translate ;  that  will  do.  Smith : 
why  is  this  verb  in  the  subjunctive  ?  That 
will  do."  Some  others,  instead  of  saying 
"That  will  do,"  said  "  Sufficient."  I  remem- 
ber that  independent  teachers  with  a  differ- 
ent understanding  of  their  duty,  had  a  hard 
time  with  the  lethargy  and  inertness  of  the 
class  under  that  general  regime.  Professor 
Edward  S.  Dana  called  on  one  of  my  class- 
mates in  Physics  :  the  student  rose,  looked 
fixedly  at  him  a  moment,  and  sat  down, 
knowing  he  had  obtained  a  zero,  but  feeling 
that  fate  had  done  its  worst,  and  that  he 
need  fear  no  fresh  misfortune  during  the 
hour.  He  therefore  looked  resignedly  out 
of  the  window.  Professor  Dana  cried,  "But 
don't  dismiss  the  subject  from  your  mind  i" 
We  had  one  teacher  to  whom  we  recited 
three  hours  a  week  during  an  entire  year. 
He  never  changed  the  intonation  of  his 


IO2     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

voice,  never  made  a  comment  or  an  inde- 
pendent remark  until  the  last  day,  and  never 
once  lifted  his  eyes  from  the  book  on  the 
desk.  I  can  remember  now  a  classmate 
secretly  looking  at  his  watch,  and,  finding 
that  the  hour  was  almost  gone,  his  face  lit 
up  with  rapture. 

Some  purely  mechanical  questions  must 
be  asked,  in  order  to  test  knowledge  and 
preparation  :  pupils  must  be  held  definitely 
to  their  work.  But  other  questions  must 
be  stimulating.  Information,  opinions,  and 
ideas  should  be  brought  out  by  the  Socratic 
method,  and  arguments  pushed  to  a  conclu- 
sion. It  is  well  to  cultivate  as  much  intel- 
lectual resistance  as  possible.  The  teacher 
should  be  delighted  when  his  judgment  or 
interpretation  or  statement  is  seriously 
questioned  by  a  pupil.  It  is  a  sign  of  life. 
I  have  had  students  who  have  passionately 
resisted  my  comments  on  certain  lessons. 
Nothing  could  possibly  please  me  more.  I 
hate  to  see  them  swallow  everything  I  say. 
The  passionate  partisanship  of  youth,  which 


Education  and  Instruction        103 

shows  itself  in  so  many  other  things,  should 
appear  in  studies.  I  asked  a  student  in  a 
class  in  Tennyson  whether  he  preferred  the 
later  poems  like  Rizpah  and  The  First 
Quarrel,  or  the  earlier  ones,  like  The  Lady  of 
Shalott  and  The  Lotos  Eaters.  He  hesitated, 
trying  to  think  up  something  to  say.  I  was 
grieved  that  he  hesitated,  and  told  the  class 
that,  at  their  time  of  life,  it  would  be  natural 
to  have  a  strenuous,  positive,  even  passion- 
ate opinion,  either  one  way  or  the  other.  I 
should  not  have  minded  if  his  hesitation 
had  been  the  hesitation  accompanying  or 
preceding  valuable  thought ;  but  it  was  plain 
that  he  did  not  know  which  he  preferred, 
and  did  not  care. 

Voluntary  recitations  are  a  good  thing, 
and  should  be  received  by  the  teacher  with 
respectful  attention.  It  is  hard  to  get 
sophisticated  students  in  big  Eastern  col- 
leges to  volunteer  remarks,  comments,  and 
questions  in  the  classroom.  There  is  a 
natural  healthy  modesty,  there  is  a  fear  of 
hypocrisy,  there  is  a  reluctance  to  make  a 


104     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

public  display  of  knowledge,  reading,  or 
love  of  literature.  How  many  times  when  a 
student  has  earnestly  volunteered  an  inde- 
pendent suggestion  have  I  seen  a  smile 
on  the  faces  of  the  other  men  !  The  en- 
vironment is  not  favourable,  and  students 
often  have  a  modest  shame  of  what  is 
best  in  them.  Still,  this  situation  can  be 
overcome  by  the  exercise  of  a  little  tact. 
Then,  too,  another  difficulty  appears.  There 
is  sure  to  be  one,  perhaps  two  eccentric  and 
zealous  students  who  want  to  talk  all  the 
time,  and  ask  questions  every  other  moment 
—  sometimes  at  very  embarrassing  moments. 
When  I  was  a  freshman,  one  of  my  class- 
mates constantly  tried  to  give  the  teacher 
information :  finally,  every  time  he  opened 
his  mouth,  other  students  took  out  pencils 
and  recorded  his  sayings  with  mock  gravity. 
I  had  one  college  pupil,  a  fine  scholar,  who 
insisted  on  talking  so  voluminously  and  so 
continuously  that  a  secret  petition  was  cir- 
culated in  the  class,  signed,  and  sent  to  me, 
requesting  me  to  shut  him  up.  But  better 


Education  and  Instruction        105 

all  these  difficulties  than  indifference  and 
inertia. 

And  this  volunteer  work  must  be  wisely 
directed  and  made  progressively  efficient. 
There  are  some  courses  where  the  students, 
knowing  the  weaknesses  of  the  professor, 
will  simulate  a  profound  interest  in  certain 
topics,  and  ask  him  questions  with  the  sole 
object  of  consuming  the  time,  so  as  to 
escape  being  called  on  themselves.  There 
are  many  amusing  instances  that  have 
come  to  my  notice.  Pompousness  on  the 
part  of  the  professor  will  sometimes  bring 
about  a  curious  situation.  One  egotistical  in- 
structor, who  had  talked  for  nearly  an  hour, 
then  took  out  a  watch,  consulted  it  solemnly, 
and  said  :  "There  are  just  five  minutes  left. 
Is  there  anyone  who  would  like  to  ask  a  ques- 
tion ? "  One  student  raised  his  hand,  and 
asked,  "What  time  is  it  ?" 

The  teacher  must  work  with  the  class,  as 
well  as  manage  it.  He  should  be  not 
only  a  master,  but  a  comrade.  I  have  seen 
cases  where  the  teacher  on  one  side  and  the 


io6     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

students  on  the  other  were  like  two  Yan- 
kees driving  a  bargain.  The  teacher  was 
trying  to  get  all  the  work  possible  out  of  the 
class,  and  give  them  the  least  possible  credit 
for  it :  the  pupils  were  trying  to  get  the 
highest  possible  mark,  with  the  least  possible 
exertion,  and  felt  terribly  "sold"  if  they  had 
read  a  line  beyond  the  confines  of  the  lesson. 
Indeed,  I  heard  of  one  student  who  received 
his  marks  at  home  in  the  presence  of  his 
father:  "Hey!"  he  cried  exultantly.  "I 
got  200  in  old  X's  course.  Am  I  the  real 
thing,  or  not?"  His  father  said,  "But  I 
thought  200  was  just  the  passing  mark." 
"  So  it  is,  father ;  that's  why  it's  such  a  darn 
good  mark."  He  had  not  wasted  an  ounce 
of  superfluous  effort. 

In  courses  where  recitations  are  imprac- 
ticable the  system  of  instruction  must  be 
by  lectures.  The  older  I  grow,  the  more 
sceptical  I  am  of  the  value  of  this  method 
in  undergraduate  work.  How  many  people 
there  are  who  the  day  after  a  lecture  re- 
member only  that  the  lecturer  was  dull,  or 


Education  and  Instruction        107 

delightful,  and  in  neither  case  remember  any- 
thing he  said  !  Courses  of  lectures  to  col- 
lege classes  by  men  who  understand  the  fine 
art  of  public  speaking,  have  made  a  careful 
study  of  presentation,  and  know  exactly 
how  to  adapt  themselves  to  various  audi- 
ences, may  accomplish  a  great  deal ;  but 
in  general,  recitations  are  more  effective. 
Instruction  by  lectures  should  invariably  be 
accompanied  by  tests,  checks,  and  various 
devices  to  ensure  not  only  attention,  but 
regular  work  on  the  part  of  the  student. 
This  may  be  accomplished  by  having  the 
big  class  divided  into  weekly  divisions  with 
quiz-masters ;  or  the  first  ten  minutes  of 
the  hour  may  be  devoted  to  a  written  test 
on  the  subject-matter ;  or  every  student  may 
be  compelled  to  hand  in  a  written  theme  on 
the  lesson  before  the  lecture  begins.  If  this 
be  done,  it  is  essential  that  the  theme  be,  in 
every  case,  submitted  before  the  lecture,  so 
that  the  student  will  have  to  write  his  sum- 
mary or  his  opinion  on  what  he  has  studied, 
not  on  what  he  has  caught  from  the  speaker. 


io8     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

The  lecture  itself  should  not  merely  in- 
struct, it  should  inspire.  The  students 
should  be  stimulated  rather  than  stuffed. 
The  genius  is  a  law  unto  himself;  but  for 
the  average  professor,  it  is  best  that  the 
lecture  should  be  neither  written  nor  extem- 
porised, but  spoken  from  notes,  each  main 
point  being  emphasised  and  driven  home  as 
energetically  and  clearly  as  possible.  I 
was  talking  once  with  Mr.  Paul  Armstrong, 
the  American  dramatist.  We  were  dis- 
cussing the  necessity  of  exaggeration  on  the 
stage.  He  said,  "The  audience  has  just 
one  accessible  spot,  a  bare  space  only  an 
inch  wide,  between  the  hair  and  the  eye- 
brows :  the  playwright  must  hit  this  mark 
with  a  wedge."  If  the  lecture  be  all  writ- 
ten in  fluent  and  elegant  English,  the  hour 
passes  agreeably  and  ineffectively,  both 
teacher  and  pupil  have  a  pleasant  time,  and 
only  the  ablest  students  obtain  any  definite 
or  lasting  result.  There  are  no  salient,  pro- 
tuberant facts  and  ideas  that  stick.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  lecturer  speak  without  any 


Education  and  Instruction        109 

notes,  the  lecture  is  apt  to  wander,  lose 
coherence  and  logical  order:  and  most 
extempore  speakers  have  the  distressing 
habit  of  beginning  nearly  every  sentence 
with  the  word  "now,"  which  is  wearing  on 
the  nerves.  But  if  a  few  points  are  tre- 
mendously emphasised,  repeated,  and  a  pause 
is  made  to  give  the  students  a  chance  to 
make  an  accurate  record  in  the  note-book, 
then  these  leading  ideas  can  be  enlarged, 
illustrated,  and  made  clear  and  interesting  by 
free  talk. 

On  the  final  written  examinations  which 
must  always  come  at  the  end  of  lecture 
courses,  care  must  be  taken  to  have  the 
questions  deal  fully  as  much  with  the  les- 
sons studied  as  with  the  lectures.  The 
teacher  must  insist  that  the  pupil  shall  not 
merely  repeat  the  phrases  delivered  by  the 
lecturer ;  for  I  have  known  instances  where 
the  lecturer  had  a  whole  series  of  pet  phrases, 
which  the  students  echoed  back  to  him  on 
the  examination  book.  The  students  should, 
indeed,  be  encouraged  to  state  independent 


no     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

views  and  opinions  on  the  examination; 
only,  in  order  that  this  may  not  lead  to 
errors  and  vagaries,  it  is  well  to  inform  the 
students  that  if  they  hold  views  divergent 
from  the  lecturer,  they  should  state  the 
professor's  view  first,  and  then  their  dis- 
senting opinion,  with  reasons.  Intelligent 
opposition  of  this  kind  brings  joy  to  a 
teacher's  heart,  and  should  be  practically 
rewarded  with  high  credit. 

In  all  my  remarks  on  school  and  college 
teaching,  I  have  purposely  confined  myself 
to  the  ordinary  school  and  the  ordinary 
college,  whether  large  or  small.  What  I 
have  said  and  shall  say  is  not  intended  to 
deal,  except  indirectly,  with  professional 
schools,  graduate  courses,  technical  scien- 
tific work,  and  manual  training  schools.  I 
do  not  understand  the  practical  problems 
in  teaching  scientific  and  mechanical  work, 
being  an  ignoramus  in  science,  and  devoid 
of  all  mechanical  skill.  I  have  never  been 
"a  handy  man  about  the  house,"  and  if  a 
clock,  bicycle,  or  window-sash  is  out  of 


Education  and  Instruction        1 1 1 

order,  I  immediately  consult  a  specialist. 
And  although  I  have  studied  in  graduate 
schools,  and  taught  graduate  students  for 
many  years,  this  is  not  the  place  to  discuss 
the  kind  of  teaching  necessary  for  such  work. 
In  undergraduate  college  teaching,  should 
the  scholar  or  the  teacher  predominate  ? 
A  university  must  have  both  kinds  of  men  : 
the  original  investigator,  who  brings  glory 
to  the  institution  by  his  published  work, 
inspires  the  respect  and  admiration  of 
pupils  by  his  reputation,  and  also  the  man 
who  knows  how  to  teach,  and  can  handle 
classes  with  high  efficiency.  Best  of  all  is 
it  when  the  same  man  combines  both 
functions.  A  professor  must  be  a  scholar 
in  order  to  teach.  If  a  teacher  is  nothing 
but  a  pleasant  fellow,  an  agreeable  personal- 
ity, with  no  ammunition  except  a  cultivated 
mind,  he  cannot  make  a  forceful  or  a  lasting 
impression.  As  Professor  Cook  has  said, 
the  students  may  leave  his  courses  "satisfied 
with  the  course,  satisfied  with  their  teacher, 
and  most  of  all,  satisfied  with  themselves." 


112     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

They  will  know  nothing  of  the  high  ideal  of 
scholarship  or  the  thorny  road  that  leads 
to  it.  A  teacher  cannot  have  the  lasting 
respect  of  his  best  pupils,  unless  he  be  a 
sound  scholar.  Above  all,  he  must  be  a 
growing  man.  A  great  danger  in  teaching, 
even  in  college,  is  that  after  one  has  an 
assured  position,  one  will  be  content  to 
teach  one's  classes,  prepare  the  lessons  for 
those  classes,  and  spend  the  rest  of  the  time 
in  amusement  or  in  mere  desultory  reading. 
After  some  years,  the  mind  gets  into  a 
condition  not  only  where  it  has  ceased  to 
grow,  but  cannot  grow.  Then  the  teaching 
suffers,  and  the  man  wonders  why  he  is  not 
so  effective  as  he  used  to  be.  The  brain  gets 
into  such  a  state  that  the  siphon  sucks  : 
there  is  really  nothing  there.  Every  teacher 
should  have  special  lines  of  work,  study, 
research,  and  production  —  in  his  special- 
ity, of  course  —  but  preferably  apart  from 
the  actual  courses  he  is  teaching.  In- 
tellectual growth  is  not  a  matter  of  age, 
it  is  entirely  individual.  A  teacher  should 


Education  and  Instruction        113 

always  be  on  the  watch  against  intellectual 
stagnation,  which  breeds  decay.  No  teacher 
should  allow  himself  to  be  beaten  by  his 
own  Past. 

But,  in  justice  to  the  students,  and  to  the 
parents  who  send  them  to  the  college  and 
pay  for  their  instruction,  the  majority  of 
every  faculty  should  be  good  teachers.  And 
great  teachers  should  be  rewarded,  advanced, 
promoted.  They  should  be  made  to  feel 
that  to  excel  in  teaching  is  a  dignified  goal 
for  ambition,  and  that  success  means  pro- 
motion. Every  university  can  afford  to 
have  some  famous  original  scholars  on  the 
faculty  rolls,  even  when,  as  sometimes 
happens,  they  are  miserable  teachers ;  but 
these  men  are  luxuries,  and  if  they  are 
failures  as  teachers,  there  should  exist  not 
the  slightest  doubt  as  to  their  actual  position 
as  profound  scholars  in  the  intellectual 
world  outside.  No  local  reputation,  how- 
ever great,  is  sufficient.  In  many  American 
universities  to-day,  owing  to  the  German 
influence,  good  teaching  not  only  fails  of 


ii4     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

reward,  but  is  not  encouraged,  not  respected, 
especially  by  those  who  can't  teach.  No 
one  respects  a  great  scholar  more  than  I  — 
but  what  would  become  of  the  students 
if  all  the  professors  were  more  interested 
in  their  own  investigations  than  in  the 
welfare  of  their  pupils  ?  What  would  even- 
tually become  of  the  professors  ?  I  heard 
one  college  professor  say  that  a  college 
would  be  a  splendid  place,  if  only  one  did  not 
have  to  meet  one's  classes  and  go  through 
the  stupid  business  of  teaching.  I  suspect 
that  the  students  cordially  reciprocated 
his  sentiments.  One  distinguished  pro- 
fessor told  me  that  no  teacher  should  ever 
care  anything  whatever  about  the  opinion 
that  his  students  had  of  him,  and  that  no 
professor  should  ever  judge  another  by 
his  success  with  his  classes,  because  students 
were  not  qualified  to  judge.  The  only 
opinion  that  any  professor  should  entertain 
with  respect  was  the  opinion  held  of  him  by 
his  colleagues  in  other  universities.  They 
were  the  only  ones  whose  good  opinion  should 


Education  and  Instruction        115 

be   sought,   for  they  were   the  only    ones 
qualified  to  judge. 

Such  a  remark  is  interesting,  and  indi- 
cates a  different  conception  of  the  work  of 
a  college  teacher  from  that  held  by  me. 
Just  as  student  popularity  may  in  some 
cases  be  a  bad  thing  for  a  teacher,  so  the 
modern  fetich  of  "original  research"  may 
lead  a  man  into  mere  vanity.  There  are 
men  who  are  so  delighted  when  their  names 
are  mentioned  by  a  German  authority 
that  one  suspects  their  ambition  is  keener 
for  reputation  than  it  is  to  add  to  the  sum 
of  human  knowledge.  Pride,  conceit,  ar- 
rogance, vanity,  and  intolerance  should 
never  accompany  great  scholarship.  And 
no  matter  what  direction  the  development 
of  our  colleges  will  take  in  the  future,  no 
matter  how  brilliant  the  rewards  of  re- 
search may  be,  so  long  as  students  attend 
colleges,  just  so  long  will  there  be  a  demand 
and  a  necessity  for  able  and  devoted  teachers. 
No  change  in  administration,  no  change  in 
organisation,  no  change  in  ideals  can  make 


1 1 6     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

the  work  of  good  teaching  superfluous,  or  can 
rob  the  teacher  of  what  to  him  is  his  greatest 
reward  —  the  affection  and  friendship  of 
his  students,  and  the  knowledge  that  he  has 
influenced  them  for  good. 


VII 

ENGLISH    COMPOSITION 

ON  the  subject  of  required  English  com- 
position, I  am  a  stout,  unabashed,  and 
thorough  sceptic.  And  although  the  major- 
ity is  still  against  me,  I  am  in  good  company. 
Professor  Child  read  and  corrected  themes 
at  Harvard  for  about  forty  years :  at  the 
end  of  the  time,  it  was  his  fervent  belief 
that  not  only  was  the  work  unprofitable 
to  the  student,  but  that  in  many  cases  it 
was  injurious.  That  it  is  always  injurious 
to  the  instructor,  when  it  is  intemperately 
indulged,  is  certain.  When  I  was  an  in- 
structor at  Harvard,  I  one  day  met  Pro- 
fessor Child  in  the  yard.  He  stopped  a 
moment  and  asked  me  what  kind  of  work 
I  was  doing.  I  said,  "Reading  themes." 
He  put  his  hand  affectionately  on  my 
shoulder,  and  remarked  with  that  wonderful 

117 


1 1 8     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

smile  of  his,  in  which  kindness  was  mingled 
with  the  regret  of  forty  years,  "Don't 
spoil  your  youth."  Professor  Wendell, 
who  inherited  the  bondage  under  which  his 
predecessor  groaned,  has  never  really  be- 
lieved in  the  efficacy  of  the  work.  Pro- 
fessor Lounsbury  of  Yale  has  given  valuable 
and  powerful  testimony  against  it.1  Pro- 
fessor Cook  and  Professor  Beers  —  two 
quite  different  types  of  men  —  are  in  this 
point  in  absolute  agreement. 

After  spending  a  year  in  graduate  study  at 
Harvard,  I  was  appointed  by  President 
Eliot.  Instructor  in  English,  an  honour  of 
which  I  have  always  been  proud.  I  ob- 
served a  curious  fact.  Men  who  had  been 
graduated  from  Harvard,  had  studied  in 
the  graduate  school,  had  topped  this  by 
some  years  of  research  in  Europe  were 
spending  nine-tenths  of  their  time  doing 
what  ?  Reading  undergraduate  required 
themes  and  correcting  in  red  ink  spelling, 
punctuation,  and  paragraphing.  Why  such 
1  Harper's  Magazine,  November,  1911. 


English  Composition  119 

mighty  labour  of  preparation  to  perform 
work  that  could  be  done  exactly  as  well  by 
any  young  school-teacher  ?  Some  of  the 
instructors  were  permitted  to  give  one  hour 
a  week  of  teaching  in  English  Literature, 
others  did  nothing  but  read  themes.  I  read 
and  marked  over  seven  hundred  themes  a 
week  —  most  of  them  were  short  themes, 
but  some  were  not.  Whenever  I  entered 
my  room  I  was  greeted  by  the  huge  pile 
of  themes  on  the  table,  awaiting  my  atten- 
tion. I  read  very  few  books  the  whole 
year  —  there  was  no  time.  I  never  went 
to  bed  before  midnight.  If  I  were  sick 
for  two  or  three  days,  a  substitute  had  to 
be  found,  for  it  was  only  by  steady  daily 
reading  that  I  could  keep  pace  with  the 
manuscripts  pouring  in  like  a  flood,  threaten- 
ing to  engulf  me  every  day.  I  am  very 
glad  that  I  had  this  experience,  for  a  variety 
of  reasons  :  it  brought  me  in  relation  with 
the  Harvard  English  faculty,  where  I  made 
friendships  for  life,  and  I  cannot  speak  too 
highly  of  the  kindness  and  encouragement 


I2O     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

shown  to  the  beginner  by  these  men.  It 
brought  me  into  remarkably  close  contact 
with  one  hundred  and  twenty  Harvard 
seniors  and  juniors,  whose  daily  themes  I 
read.  These  young  gentlemen  practically 
kept  a  diary  by  this  method,  and  told  me 
frankly  not  only  their  experiences,  but 
their  thoughts.  I  also  read  freshman  and 
sophomore  required  themes,  and  had  an 
excellent  opportunity  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  mental  states  of  the  average 
Harvard  undergraduate.  And  I  learned 
what  teaching  English  composition  meant. 
But  with  the  highest  respect  and  admira- 
tion for  my  colleagues,  nothing  on  earth 
would  have  induced  me  to  continue  such 
brain-fagging  toil  another  year.  I  do  not 
know  that  I  should  have  been  invited  to 
do  so,  for  I  accepted  another  situation 
without  asking.  The  curious  thing  is,  that 
I  then  believed  in  the  efficacy  of  the  system. 
I  said  to  myself  :  "This  is  worse  than  coal- 
heaving.  This  is  nerve-destroying,  a  tor- 
ture to  soul  and  body.  But  it  is  necessary. 


English  Composition  121 

Someone  must  do  it.  Why  not  I  ?  But 
not  I  any  longer." 

I  entered  upon  my  duties  at  Yale,  and 
taught  freshmen  English  Literature.  These 
freshmen  had  passed  no  entrance  examina- 
tion in  English,  for  Yale  had  not  then 
adopted  it.  The  next  year  I  had  the  same 
students.  I  made  them  all  write  four  or 
five  rather  long  compositions  during  the 
year,  in  addition  to  and  in  connection  with 
their  classroom  work  in  literature.  When 
I  took  home  the  first  batch,  I  said  :  "Now 
for  trouble.  These  young  men  have  never 
had  instruction  in  English  composition, 
and  have  never  passed  through  the  valuable 
drill  in  the  freshman  year  given  in  other 
colleges."  But,  to  my  unspeakable  amaze- 
ment, their  compositions  were  just  as  good 
technically  as  those  written  by  Harvard 
sophomores !  It  was  a  tremendous  sur- 
prise, for  the  writers  were  not,  as  a  class, 
one  whit  more  advanced  mentally  than 
their  Harvard  brothers. 

Then  in  junior  year,  I  required,  as  I  do 


122     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

now,  every  student  in  a  large  lecture  course 
to  write  a  weekly  theme.  Indeed,  for  one 
who  does  not  believe  in  required  composi- 
tions, I  of  my  own  choice  read  a  large 
number  every  year.  But  this  is  not  so 
contradictory  as  it  may  seem,  which  will 
presently  appear.  I  took  one  weekly  batch, 
all  of  them,  the  few  good,  the  few  bad,  and 
the  many  commonplace,  up  to  Harvard, 
and  submitted  them  to  one  of  the  Harvard 
professors  who  was  immersed  in  the 
"system."  He  read  them  carefully,  and 
told  me  they  were  exactly  as  good  techni- 
cally as  those  done  by  Harvard  juniors. 

Now  unless  the  results  of  constant  re- 
quired themes  are  absolutely  definite  and 
satisfactory,  it  simply  does  not  pay  to 
require  them ;  for  the  labour  and  expense 
involved  in  reading  and  correcting  are  pro- 
digious, and  grow  every  year  like  a  cor- 
rupt pension  bill.  I  know  of  nothing  in 
the  world  that  illustrates  more  beautifully 
the  law  of  diminishing  returns  than  required 
courses  in  composition.  A  class  of  students 


English  Composition  123 

will  never  under  any  circumstances  write 
five  times  as  well  by  writing  five  themes  as 
they  will  by  writing  one ;  but  the  reading 
and  correcting  of  five  themes  require  five 
times  the  effort  on  the  part  of  the  body  of 
teachers.  In  those  schools  and  colleges 
where  the  English  departments  believe  in 
constant  required  compositions,  they  are 
constantly  demanding  more  instructors, 
more  time,  and  more  money.  Quite  nat- 
urally. I  read  a  very  interesting  report  on 
the  subject  by  that  accomplished  pro- 
fessor of  English,  Sophie  Hart,  of  Welles- 
ley.  Here  are  some  extracts  :  "The 
committee  urges  an  increase  in  the  time 
given  to  the  reading  and  discussion  of 
themes  in  class.  .  .  .  An  increase  in  the  re- 
writing of  themes  is  also  urged.  .  .  .  Stu- 
dents should,  as  they  advance,  be  taught 
to  expect  to  rewrite  from  60  to  75  per  cent 
of  their  themes.  .  .  .  The  greatest  need  in 
college  instruction  in  English,  as  in  secon- 
dary schools,  is  a  larger  teaching  staff.  .  .  . 
Professor  Hart  of  Cornell  strikes  at  the  root 


124     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

of  our  difficulty  in  his  communication  to 
the  committee:  'Our  Cornell  experience 
is  that  the  most  difficult  thing  to  over- 
come is  the  lack  of  thought.  Many  of  our 
freshmen  seem  to  believe  that  anything 
patched  up  in  grammatical  shape  will  pass 
for  writing.  ...  I  urge  school-teachers  to 
train  their  scholars  to  think;  especially  to 
prepare  outlines  of  compositions  before 
writing  the  composition. ' ' 

Art  thou  there,  truepenny  ?  Of  course 
that  is  the  real  difficulty.  They  are  forced 
to  write  before  they  have  anything  to 
say,  and  intelligent  teachers  are  forced 
to  read  and  correct  this  vain  and  empty 
stuff.  If  a  student  is  well-read,  familiar 
with  good  literature,  and  has  opinions,  his 
writing  is  usually  technically  adequate. 
I  heard  a  college  president  say,  "The  way  to 
learn  to  write  is  to  write."  But  it  is  not 
true.  A  good  physician  or  surgeon  has 
not  learned  to  practise  by  practising :  that 
is  the  method  of  quacks.  Years  of  in- 
struction in  knowledge  and  in  principles 


English  Composition  125 

must  come  first.  I  have  known  cases 
where  a  boy  will  write  a  required  composition 
full  of  grammatical  and  rhetorical  errors ; 
then  he  will  write  a  letter  to  his  instructor, 
saying  he  is  called  home  by  illness  in  the 
family,  and  the  letter  is  technically  correct. 

I  once  saw  a  hundred  students,  armed 
only  with  pencil  and  paper,  shut  up  in  a 
college  classroom.  The  teacher  sprung 
some  subjects  on  them  —  "One  Summer's 
Day"  among  others.  No  student  could 
leave  till  he  had  finished  his  composition. 
Imagine  the  results  !  A  man  I  know  once 
remarked,  "I  want  to  write  articles  for  the 
papers  and  magazines  :  the  only  trouble  is, 
I  find  I  have  a  paucity  of  words  and  ideas." 

In  the  schools  there  must  be  some  ele- 
mentary instruction  in  writing  :  the  simple 
principles  can  be  taught,  and  themes  written 
to  illustrate  spelling,  sentence  arrangement, 
punctuation,  and  paragraphing.  Composi- 
tions on  interesting  contemporary  subjects, 
or  on  subjects  connected  closely  with  the 
lessons  in  Literature  can  from  time  to  time 


126     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

be  required.  A  good  plan  is  to  have  the 
class  vote  on  a  list  of  subjects. 

In  college,  it  is  well  to  have  critical 
writing  accompany  literary  courses,  es- 
pecially in  the  last  two  years.  This  is 
true  particularly  of  lecture  courses  in  Litera- 
ture, where  the  students  should  write, 
not  a  synopsis  nor  a  description,  but  an 
honest  opinion.  And  they  should  be  en- 
couraged to  write  truthfully,  absolutely 
regardless  of  the  world's  valuation  of  a 
certain  author.  Let  them  say  what  .they 
really  think.  Each  theme  should  be  a 
personal  impression,  a  confession. 

Then,  although  I  absolutely  disbelieve 
in  the  study  of  formal  rhetoric,  and  also  in 
courses  in  required  composition,  I  believe 
that  every  college  should  furnish  elective 
courses  —  as  many  as  possible  —  for  the 
benefit  of  those  students  who  really  wish  to 
practise  writing  as  a  fine  art,  who  wish  to 
improve  their  literary  style.  These  courses 
should  be  strictly  limited  in  numbers,  so 
that  the  teacher  may  have  plenty  of  time 


English  Composition  127 

for  personal  conference  outside  of  the  class- 
room with  each  pupil.  This  is  much  more 
valuable  than  the  class  meetings. 

I  am  certain,  however,  that  the  best  way 
to  learn  to  write  is  to  read,  just  as  one  learns 
good  manners  by  associating  with  well-bred 
people.  A  student  who  loves  good  reading, 
who  has  a  trained  critical  taste,  will  almost 
always  write  well,  and  is  in  a  position  to 
develop  his  style  by  practice,  the  reading 
and  ideas  having  come  in  the  proper  order, 
first  instead  of  last.  I  was  teaching  a 
large  number  of  Yale  seniors  and  juniors  a 
course  in  American  Literature,  each  pupil 
being  required  to  write  a  weekly  expression 
of  opinion  on  the  book  just  read,  and  hand  it 
in  before  the  lecture.  I  append  a  theme 
submitted  by  a  junior  who  had  never  re- 
ceived the  slightest  training  in  rhetoric  or 
English  composition.  He  had  even  omitted 
the  sophomore  course  in  English  Literature. 
But  he  came  to  college  from  a  home  where 
there  were  good  books,  and  he  was  passion- 
ately fond  of  reading.  The  subject  for  the 


128     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

week  was  The  Scarlet  Letter,  and  this  is  what 
he  wrote : — 

One  thing  which  struck  me  in  this  story  was 
the  subtle  skill  with  which  Hawthorne  enwraps 
his  characters  in  the  atmosphere  of  long  past 
years.  The  beginning  and  end  are  like  glimpses 
down  a  long,  dim  vista ;  and  on  all  his  pages 
there  is  the  dust  and  mould  of  time.  It  is  most 
truly  dramatic ;  but  its  dramatic  power  lies 
rather  in  its  profound  understanding  of  human- 
ity than  in  its  fervour  of  delineation.  It  is, 
compared  with  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare, 
like  the  glassy  reflection  of  a  far-off  conflagra- 
tion compared  with  that  conflagration  itself. 
His  people  are  most  true  interpretations  of  human 
feeling;  yet  they  always  partake  of  a  vague, 
incorporeal  character,  like  beings  seen  in  far-off 
perspective.  Their  conversation,  too,  has  a 
certain  old-time  quaintness,  which  never  strikes 
us  as  untrue  to  life,  yet  does  not  seem  just 
like  ordinary  conversation ;  just  as  a  human 
voice  may  sound  human  and  yet  strange  when 
coming  from  a  far  distance.  I  think  this  is 
really  one  of  the  greatest  charms  of  the  book. 
In  that  gulf  of  generations  all  their  grosser 


English  Composition  129 

personalities  are  lost;  and  we  are  able  to  con- 
fine our  attention  to  the  workings  of  the  soul. 
This  misty  atmosphere  also  lends  peculiar 
sweetness  and  force  to  Hawthorne's  moral. 
It  makes  it  seem,  not  like  the  dogmatic  asser- 
tion of  an  aggressive  moralist,  but  like  the  voice 
of  impersonal  experience,  speaking  out  of  the 
dusky  caves  of  time. 


VIII 

ENGLISH  PRONUNCIATION 


"  ^T\HEN  said  they  unto  him,  Say  now 
-••  Shibboleth  :  and  he  said  Sibboleth  : 
for  he  could  not  frame  to  pronounce  it  right. 
Then  they  took  him,  and  slew  him  at  the 
passages  of  Jordan  :  and  there  fell  at  that 
time  of  the  Ephraimites  forty  and  two 
thousand." 

This  was  a  rather  drastic  method  of 
ensuring  general  accuracy  in  speaking  the 
language  ;  one  sometimes  wishes  it  were 
not  obsolete.  Christian  civilisation  has 
made  an  enormous  advance  on  Old  Testa- 
ment ideas  of  morality  —  but  the  ancient 
heroes  knew  what  they  wanted,  and  how  to 
get  it.  I  would  there  were  some  modern 
practicable  scheme  for  improving  the  pro- 
nunciation of  English,  not  merely  among 
pupils  in  our  schools,  but  among  the  teachers. 

130 


English  Pronunciation  131 

We  have  daily  evidence  in  America  of  bar- 
barous assaults  made  by  those  who  ought  to 
know  better  on  the  defenceless  mother- 
tongue  —  assaults  made  with  impunity  in 
the  absence  of  the  axe.  No  teacher  in 
school  or  college  should  permit  a  single 
4.one  of  his  pupils  to  speak  the  language 
more  accurately  than  he.  The  American 
school  —  which  should  be  a  temple  where 
the  English  language  is  treated  with  rever- 
ence —  is  sometimes  a  scene  of  cynical 
desecration.  I  am  not  at  all  attacking 
colloquial  slang,  which,  in  its  metaphoric 
picturesqueness,  is  often  the  very  life  of 
speech  :  I  am  thinking  of  the  careless  mutila- 
tion of  words  in  good  and  regular  standing. 
A  fundamental  thing  that  all  teachers 
should  preach  and  practise  is  the  un- 
affectedly correct  pronunciation  of  that 
language  which  is  now  heard  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth.  Furthermore,  the 
very  difficulties  of  English  pronunciation 
make  the  successful  surmounting  of  them 
a  glorious  achievement,  and  one  that 


132     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

should  appeal  to  the  spirit  of  youth, 
which  loves  a  desperate  undertaking.  Ger- 
man is  practically  a  phonetic  language : 
and  leaving  out  the  matter  of  accent,  it  is 
easier  for  an  American,  with  a  little  in- 
struction, to  speak  German  words  correctly 
than  it  is  for  him  to  conquer  the  wild  and 
lawless  army  of  English  syllables.  Let  us, 
then,  at  the  start  not  minimise  the  strength 
of  the  foe :  let  this  rather  become  an  in- 
spiration. 

No  one  can  accuse  me  of  apeing  the 
English  :  indeed,  I  am  more  of  a  Jingo  than 
an  Anglo-maniac.  But,  in  the  last  analysis, 
the  pronunciation  of  cultivated  English- 
men is  the  final  test  as  to  how  most  words 
should  be  spoken.  I  say  pronunciation, 
rather  than  inflection ;  for  the  American 
imitation  of  what  is  known  as  the  "English 
accent"  is  proper  matter  for  laughter. 
And  I  say  "most  words,"  because  there  are 
certain  words  which  are  pronounced  quite 
differently  in  England  than  in  America,  and 
which  it  seems  an  affectation  to  copy  here. 


English  Pronunciation  133 

Some  of  these  are  Clerk,  Trait,  Schedule, 
Fracas,  Lieutenant,  and  the  last  letter  in  the 
alphabet,  which  Shakespeare  calls  by  a 
bad  name.  There  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  attempt  to  force  these  on  an  Ameri- 
can public  which  has  repeatedly  declined 
to  accept  them.  But  there  is  one  word, 
been,  which  the  English  universally  pro- 
nounce like  the  sacred  vegetable  of  Boston, 
and  which  is  gaining  ground  so  rapidly  in 
our  country  that  it  seems  sure  ultimately  to 
prevail. 

Another  English  pronunciation  that  is 
certain  to  conquer  in  this  country,  and  that 
has  already  gained  the  majority  of  culti- 
vated Americans,  is  the  broad  A.  To  one 
like  myself,  brought  up  from  childhood  with 
a  flat  Last,  Calf,  Laugh,  Aunt,  etc.,  it  was 
years  before  I  could  speak  these  words 
broadly  without  feeling  like  a  (flat)  Ass  ;  but 
after  heroic  and  persistent  endeavour,  I 
now  pronounce  them  broadly  without  even 
the  consciousness  of  unusual  virtue.  It  is 
only  in  gusts  of  anger  or  sudden  excite- 


134     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

ment  that  I  descend  from  the  heights  to  the 
flats,  even  as  the  dog  to  his  Scriptural  menu. 
Next  to  the  first  letter  in  the  alphabet,  the 
most  shamefully  treated  of  the  five  vowels 
is  the  U,  and  the  combination  of  the  letters 
EW,  that  should  resemble  it  in  accuracy,  as 
it  does  now  in  sin.  There  should  be  a 
distinct  difference  between  the  sound  of  U 
and  double  0,  actually  observable  to  the 
naked  ear  in  such  words  as  Duke,  Duty, 
Constitution,  Enthusiasm,  Tuesday,  News. 
The  letter  0,  while  not  mishandled  like  the 
U,  is  treated  with  scant  courtesy,  and  often 
with  absolute  neglect,  in  such  words  as 
Innocent,  Violent,  Violet;  indeed,  the  latter 
word  is  often  pronounced  as  though  it  were 
spelled  Vialit.  This  same  inoffensive  and 
entirely  respectable  vowel  is  dragged  ab- 
surdly out  of  shape  in  such  words  as 
Mock,  Dog,  Boss,  God,  Moss,  where  it  is 
literally  given  an  Aw-ful  sound.  Our  most 
popular  vowel,  E,  is  abominably  treated 
in  such  words  as  Cellar,  Yellow,  Philadelphia, 
where  it  is  given  the  sound  of  U:  this  is 


English  Pronunciation  135 

even  more  common  and  more  ugly  in  two 
useful  words,  Very  and  American. 

We  laugh  (with  a  broad  A,  I  hope)  at 
the  Cockney  for  making  the  H  silent 
where  it  should  be  plainly  heard,  but  we 
imitate  him  in  the  combination  WH, 
where  the  H  should  have  its  value  as 
clearly  as  though  the  spelling  were  HW,  as 
it  used  to  be,  and  ought  to  have  re- 
mained. The  majority  of  Americans  play 
Wist,  discuss  the  price  of  Weat,  and  have, 
apparently,  not  the  faintest  notion  of  how 
such  words  as  When,  Where,  and  Why 
should  be  pronounced.  The  dog  letter,  R, 
has  a  curious  fate  in  American  mouths :  it 
is  either  unduly  accented  in  such  words  as 
Here  and  Dinner  (Middle  West)  or  it  is 
hitched  on  to  the  end  of  words  like  Idea, 
Law,  Thaw,  and  Saw,  where  it  is  as  awk- 
ward as  a  sailor  on  horseback.  Listen  to 
any  Yankee,  when  he  says  "I  have  no  idea 
of  it,"  and  you  will  note  that  he  speaks  the 
truth. 

Most  Americans  are   mortally  afraid  to 


136     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

shove  the  accent  on  polysyllabic  words 
sufficiently  far  back.  Such  words  as  Lamen- 
table, Exquisite,  Hospitable,  and  Vehemently 
should  invariably  be  accented  vehemently 
on  the  first  syllable. 


IX 

TEACHING    ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

IT  is  a  common  saying  that  English 
Literature  cannot  be  taught;  but  it  is 
false,  for  I  have  been  teaching  it  twenty 
years.  The  problems  of  the  teacher  of  Eng- 
lish are  not  the  problems  of  those  who  teach 
Mathematics,  physical  science,  and  foreign 
languages,  but  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  Eng- 
lish cannot  be  taught,  and  taught  in  a  disci- 
plinary as  well  as  in  an  instructive  fashion. 
All  this  depends  partly  on  the  method,  and 
mainly  on  the  teacher.  Someone  has  said 
that  there  is  naturally  more  discipline  in 
the  study  of  Mathematics  than  in  the  study 
of  History,  if  History  be  taught  one  hour  a 
week  and  Mathematics  five  :  put  them  on  an 
equal  allotment  and  on  an  equal  dignity,  and 
it  is  at  least  possible  that  the  disparity  would 
not  appear  so  grossly.  For  a  great  many 
137 


138      Teaching  in  School  and  College 

years,  the  idea  prevailed  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  that  English  Literature  could 
not  be  taught.  Anglo-Saxon  could  be 
taught,  either  as  a  foreign  language,  or  as 
a  linguistic  science ;  historical  English  gram- 
mar and  phonetics  could  be  taught,  but 
not  Literature.  Such  ideas  are  now  losing 
ground. 

If  distinction  in  philology  and  linguistics 
were  an  absolute  sine  qua  non  for  the  teacher 
of  English  Literature,  I  should  have  to  seek 
another  occupation.  I  have  the  highest 
respect  for  linguistic  studies,  and  realise 
their  importance.  But  they  affect  me  ex- 
actly as  other  sciences  do  —  I  have  no 
talent  for  them,  and  no  deep  interest  there. 
I  know  this  sounds  like  blasphemy,  but 
it  happens  to  be  the  humble  truth.  I  went 
through  the  grind  of  Anglo-Saxon,  as  every 
would-be  professor  of  English  Literature 
should  do.  At  Yale  we  quite  properly,  and 
with  my  active  and  hearty  approval  and 
support,  require  the  study  of  Anglo-Saxon 
as  a  requisite  to  the  doctor's  degree  in 


Teaching  English  Literature      139 

English.  Not  only  is  it  excellent  training 
and  a  fundamental  basis  for  the  study  of  the 
language,  but  every  candidate  for  a  teacher's 
position  in  English  may  be  forced  to  accept 
a  position  where  he  will  be  called  on  to 
teach  elementary  Anglo-Saxon,  and  he  must 
be  qualified  to  meet  this  emergency.  There 
are  those  who  prefer  the  study  of  Linguistics 
to  the  study  of  Literature.  This  causes 
me  no  surprise.  There  are  those  who  prefer 
the  study  of  Mathematics  to  Literature,  — 
why  not  ?  I  gaze  upon  them  not  with  pity 
or  wonder,  but  with  an  awful  respect, 
knowing  that  I  could  never  attain  to  such 
heights.  As  a  young  man,  I  was  free  to 
choose,  and  did  not  wish  to  teach  subjects 
for  which  I  had  no  talent  and  which  I  did 
not  enjoy.  I  chose  to  teach  Literature. 

I  had  some  little  difficulties  at  the  outset. 
After  two  years  of  graduate  study  at  Yale, 
I  proceeded  to  Harvard  and  interviewed 
Professor  Child.  I  told  him  that  I  had 
come  there  to  pursue  special  studies  in 
English  Literature,  and  mentioned  a  list 


140     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

I  had  picked  out  in  the  catalogue.  He 
recommended  me  to  take  four  other  courses 
instead,  which  I  saw  were  mainly  lin- 
guistic. I  remarked  that  these  did  not 
interest  me,  that  I  had  come  with  definite 
plans  of  what  I  wished  to  undertake,  and 
must  go  elsewhere  if  not  allowed  to  follow 
my  inclinations.  He  was  finally  good 
enough  not  only  to  accede,  but  to  give  me 
his  blessing,  saying  that  the  majority  of 
graduate  students  did  not  know  what  they 
wanted,  had  to  be  fed  by  hand,  and  that  it 
was  refreshing  to  find  a  student  with 
independence  and  a  programme.  I  was 
greatly  comforted  and  encouraged,  and 
found  the  year  most  profitable. 

In  teaching  English  Literature  in  the 
schools,  except  in  those  unfortunate  cases 
where  everything  else  has  to  be  sacrificed 
in  order  to  make  the  pupil  pass  the  college 
English  entrance  examinations,  the  teacher 
should  remember  that  the  main  object 
of  his  work  in  the  classroom  is  not  word 
study,  is  not  the  grinding  out  of  classical 


Teaching  English  Literature      141 

allusions,  is  not  unrelated  biographical  de-  \ 
tails  of  authors,  but  the  awakening  in  a 
pupil's  mind  of  a  love  of  reading.  A  teacher 
should  not  be  distressed  if  a  boy  or  girl 
reads  a  lot  of  trash  outside  of  school  hours  : 
it  is  better  to  read  trash  than  to  read  nothing. 
When  I  was  a  small  boy,  I  read  hundreds  of 
volumes  that  were  in  themselves  worthless 
—  the  "Outward  Bound  Series"  by  Oliver 
Optic  (I  can  remember  Lieutenant  Shuffles 
to  this  day) ;  the  "Army  and  Navy  Series" 
by  the  same  author,  containing  the  histories 
of  those  remarkably  successful  young  gentle- 
men, Tom  and  Jack  Somers  ;  row  on  row  of 
Harry  Castlemon's  books,  The  Sports- 
man's Club  in  the  Saddle,  etc. ;  the  entire 
series  of  Jack  Harkaway's  adventures  with 
the  Indians,  and  in  other  perils ;  an  amaz- 
ing number  of  detective  stories  —  Macon 
Moore  is  on  your  track !  all  of  Horatio 
Alger's  exciting  and  priggishly  moral  tales. 
What  did  I  get  out  of  this  stuff  ?  I  obtained 
a  love  for  reading.  I  realised  the  inex- 
haustible delight  there  was  in  books,  the 


142     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

possibility  of  an  instant  and  wonderful 
change  of  scene  from  my  humdrum  little 
existence  to  the  plains  of  the  West,  or  the 
snow-capped  mountains  of  the  deep.  I 
obtained  an  enormously  increased  English 
vocabulary,  the  ability  to  read  English 
with  speed  and  pleasure,  and  a  constant,  if 
crude,  stimulation  of  the  imagination.  It 
was  when  I  was  in  this  welter  of  trash,  and 
hungry  for  more,  that  a  city  librarian, 
Mr.  Frank  B.  Gay  of  Hartford,  tactfully 
introduced  me  to  something  better.  I  went 
down  to  the  institute  to  take  out  some  new 
books  by  Oliver  Optic.  Mr.  Gay  suggested 
that  I  read  Shakespeare  instead.  Just  to 
please  him,  I  consented  to  try,  and  he  gave 
me  Julius  Ccesar.  I  became  so  intensely 
interested  in  the  play  that  before  a  year 
had  passed,  I  had  read  all  the  dramas  of 
William  Shakespeare.  My  taste  was  ex- 
traordinary :  I  thought  Titus  Andronicus 
a  much  superior  play  to  Othello,  simply 
because  it  was  a  blood  and  thunder  story: 
it  was,  indeed,  rather  my  favourite  play. 


Teaching  English  Literature      143 

But  it  was  something  to  have  read  all  of 
Shakespeare  when  I  was  twelve  years  old. 
I  could  not  have  done  this,  had  I  not 
already  formed  the  reading  habit  —  had  I 
not  learned  to  read  a  long  book  with  ease 
and  speed.  I  owe  this  largely  to  silly  tales 
of  adventure. 

If  boys  or  girls  have  the  reading  habit, 
their  attention  can  be  diverted  to  good 
books  instead  of  bad;  but  if  they  don't 
read  at  all,  or  read  slowly  and  with  diffi- 
culty, the  task  of  the  teacher  is  a  thousand 
times  harder.  The  teacher  must  try  to 
cultivate  a  love  of  reading,  then  the  ability 
to  discriminate  between  good  and  bad  books, 
and  thus  the  formation  of  taste,  which  is 
the  beginning  of  criticism.  This  cannot 
be  done  by  the  teacher's  forcing  his  own 
opinion  on  the  class,  or  the  opinions  of 
distinguished  critics ;  nor  by  the  constant 
denunciation  of  trash,  or  a  false  attitude 
toward  it.  You  can't  cure  a  drunkard  by 
telling  him  that  whiskey  does  not  taste 
good,  because  he  knows  better. 


144     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

The  way  to  learn  to  read  a  foreign  lan- 
guage is  not  to  begin  with  some  ponderous 
work,  but  with  a  novel  or  play  that  is  so 
exciting  that  one  is  intensely  eager  to  read 
the  next  page,  and  so  learns  the  language 
in  spite  of  himself. 

Literature  read  in  schools  and  colleges 
must  be  brought  into  constant  relation 
with  life  rather  than  with  grammars, 
dictionaries,  and  works  of  reference,  though 
these  all  have  their  place.  Boys  and  girls 
are  intensely  practical  as  well  as  imagina- 
tive ;  they  feel  positive  values.  As  Pro- 
fessor Charlton  Lewis  has  wisely  said, 
"we  are  likely  to  succeed  in  impressing 
upon  our  pupils  an  author's  view  of  moral 
questions,  his  attitude  toward  life,  his  pre- 
sentments of  human  character,  his  own 
character,  the  plausibility  and  justice  of 
his  narrative."  These  are  the  things  that 
boys  and  girls  actually  feel,  and  can  be  made 
to  feel  more  intensely. 

The  best  work  is  often  done  by  a  faithful 
teacher  outside  of  the  classroom,  for  the 


Teaching  English  Literature     145 

best  teaching  is  always  between  teacher 
and  individual  rather  than  between  teacher 
and  squad.  A  few  words  in  season  to  the 
intelligent  and  to  the  dullard,  a  personal 
interest  in  their  reading,  a  little  talk  with 
them  about  books.  At  the  earliest  possible 
age,  each  pupil  should  be  encouraged  to 
own  books,  to  start  a  private  library.  The 
instinct  of  ownership  is  enormously  strong 
in  boys  and  girls.  "This  belongs  to  me." 
"Is  that  your  dog?"  This  passion  for 
ownership,  once  directed  toward  the  ac- 
cumulation of  books,  may  lead  to  astonish- 
ing and  permanent  results  for  good.  Let 
them  get  the  habit  of  collecting  books  as 
every  boy  collects  stamps,  eggs,  minerals, 
post-cards,  butterflies. 

This  is  one  reason  why  I  have  always 
believed  that  the  public  purchase  of  text- 
books in  schools,  and  the  loaning  of  them 
to  the  pupils  is  a  bad  thing.  It  is  better 
that  their  families  should  make  the  sacrifice 
and  each  student  own  the  book  that  he  uses 
in  class. 


146     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

In  freshman  and  sophomore  instruction 
in  English  Literature,  the  teacher  finds 
himself  placed  in  a  greater  responsibility 
than  the  teacher  of  Mathematics  or  foreign 
languages.  The  recitation  cannot  run  itself, 
cannot  move  on  predetermined  lines.  In 
Mathematics  there  are  problems  to  be  done  in 
the  classroom,  at  the  desks  or  on  the  board. 
In  Latin  the  text  must  be  pronounced, 
must  be  translated ;  there  are  the  necessary 
questions  on  grammatical  construction.  In 
English  there  is  nothing  to  translate,  nothing 
to  write  on  the  board ;  the  responsibility 
falls  on  the  teacher,  and  he  must  make  his 
own  way. 

There  is  no  better  author  to  begin  with 
than  Shakespeare :  he  interests  all  kinds  of 
minds,  is  the  greatest  writer  in  literature, 
and  the  most  fruitful  to  teach.  A  complete 
and  unexpurgated  text  should  be  used  in 
colleges,  one  without  too  many  notes,  and 
especially  one  without  too  much  critical 
matter  in  the  introduction.  If  the  students 
will  do  it,  it  is  well  to  encourage  them  to  have 


Teaching  English  Literature      147 

their  copies  of  the  play  rebound  and  inter- 
leaved, so  that  they  can  make  notes  of 
the  interpretations  in  the  classroom,  and 
make  them  in  the  proper  places.  Lessons 
should  be  short,  and  every  line  studied. 
Three  hours  a  week  for  a  month  is  not  too 
long  a  time  to  spend  on  one  play.  As  each 
student  is  called  on,  it  is  well  to  have  him 
read  aloud  a  dozen  lines,  before  questions 
are  put.  Most  students  are  wretched 
readers,  have  miserable  enunciation,  and 
slovenly  pronunciation.  The  teacher  has  a 
chance  to  help  incidentally  here.  The  best 
passages  can  be  read  aloud  at  various  times 
in  the  hour  by  the  teacher  himself,  of  course 
not  "dramatically,"  or  in  a  theatrical 
style,  but  with  intelligence.  Interpretative 
reading  aloud  by  the  teacher  is  exceedingly 
valuable,  and  sometimes  better  than  a 
commentary.  I  have  known  many  students 
who  never  realised  the  beauty  or  true 
meaning  of  a  passage,  until  they  heard  it 
read  aloud  by  the  teacher.  The  late  Pro- 
fessor Hiram  Corson  may  have  carried  this 


148     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

to  excess  :  he  believed  that  interpretative 
reading  aloud  was  the  method  for  instruction 
in  Literature.  He  said  that  a  certain  can- 
didate for  the  doctor's  degree  had  every 
qualification  but  one,  but  that  this  deficiency 
was  fatal,  and  would  utterly  prevent  his 
success  as  a  teacher.  The  candidate  had 
lost  two  front  teeth  ! 

I  should  not  insist  on  reading  aloud  as 
the  sole  method  or  the  best,  and  it  should 
not  be  indulged  in  too  frequently.  But 
it  has  an  important  place.  The  finest 
reader  of  Shakespeare's  verse  that  I  have 
ever  heard,  either  on  or  off  the  stage,  was 
Professor  Child.  He  occasionally  read  a 
page  aloud  in  the  classroom,  and  it  was  better 
than  volumes  of  commentaries.  The  lines  be- 
came illuminated  with  meaning;  took  on 
new  interest  and  significance. 

Shakespeare's  language  must  be  under- 
stood. It  is  all  well  enough  to  talk  about 
the  value  of  aesthetic  criticism,  and  the 
killing  dulness  of  philological  study.  ^Es- 
thetic criticism  has  no  value  at  all,  unless  it 


Teaching  English  Literature      149 

is  based  on  accurate  knowledge.  There  was 
one  critic  who  said  that  Shakespeare  some- 
times wrote  nonsense,  which  is,  perhaps, 
true,  only  he  selected  an  unfortunate  illus- 
tration. He  took  the  line  from  The  Tempest, 
"The  fringed  curtains  of  thine  eye  advance," 
and  said  this  was  nonsense,  for  how  could 
anyone  advance  his  eyelids  ?  The  trouble 
was,  the  critic  did  not  know  what  the  word 
"advance"  meant  in  the  sentence  under 
fire,  so  the  recoil  of  his  criticism  was  greater 
than  the  discharge,  which  happens  to  many 
critics.  In  some  ways,  Shakespeare  is  a 
very  obscure  writer,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  after  three  hundred  years  of  criticism, 
scholars  and  readers  have  been  unable  to 
agree  whether  or  not  his  most  famous 
character  was  sane.  Some  say  Hamlet  was 
mad,  others  say  he  only  pretended  to  be, 
while  Dr.  Furness,  who  ought  to  know 
better  than  anybody,  says  Hamlet  was 
neither  mad  nor  pretended  to  be  !  But  the 
first  step  is  unquestionably  a  knowledge  of 
what  the  words  mean.  I  read  a  speech  by 


150      Teaching  in  School  and  College 

a  popular  actor,  who  has  acted  Hamlet 
many  years,  and  it  was  clear  that  he 
did  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"coil"  in  Hamlet's  great  soliloquy.  Some- 
times the  history  of  certain  words  like 
Orlando's  "quintain"  can  be  effectively 
introduced.  But  whether  much  or  little 
time  be  devoted  to  philology  and  word 
history,  and  that  will  probably  depend,  no 
matter  what  be  said,  on  the  teacher's 
hobbies,  the  students  must  learn  the  mean- 
ing of  every  single  word  in  the  play,  and 
their  definitions  must  in  every  instance  be 
precise  and  adequate.  In  this  way,  not 
only  is  Shakespeare  properly  studied,  but 
the  students  may  form  that  most  desirable 
habit  of  reading  with  understanding  —  of 
not  proceeding  to  the  next  sentence  until 
they  have  understood  the  one  immediately 
under  the  eye. 

Characterisation  is  an  important  and  a 
fascinating  part  of  Shakespeare  study,  and 
there  should  be  a  wide  difference  of  opinion 
expressed  in  the  class,  stimulated  by  the 


Teaching  English  Literature     151 

teacher.  One  reason  why  people  differ  so 
much  in  their  estimation  of  Shakespeare's 
personages  is  simply  because  his  men  and 
women  are  so  real.  The  more  alive  a 
character  is,  the  more  difficult  is  it  to  sum 
him  up  in  a  phrase  or  a  formula.  And 
never,  never  should  pupils  be  allowed  to 
fall  into  that  detestable  habit  so  common 
among  people  who  are  not  students,  of 
substituting  phrases  for  ideas.  If  the 
majority  of  the  class  do  not  feel  the  intense 
reality  of  Shakespeare's  characters,  and  if 
they  do  not  hold  individual  strong  opinions, 
the  teacher  is  a  failure.  The  men  and 
women  should  be  judged  by  life,  not  by 
book  standards.  College  undergraduates 
ought  to  understand  the  friendship  between 
Hamlet  and  Horatio. 

In  studying  plot  construction  I  would 
study  it  naturally  and  simply,  and  avoid, 
so  far  as  possible,  the  use  of  technical  terms 
and  diagrams.  Every  student  should  learn 
what  is  meant  by  the  three  unities ;  but 
I  do  not  believe  in  the  employment  of 


152     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

terms  like  "rising"  and  "falling  action," 
and  making  the  students  answer  like  parrots 
questions  of  that  nature.  I  have  seen  some 
works  on  Shakespeare  that  employ  strange 
terminology;  others  filled  with  diagrams, 
that  look  like  treatises  on  Geometry.  I 
remember  with  what  profit  and  delight  I 
read  one  part  of  Professor  Moulton's  work, 
Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist,  and  with 
what  disappointment  I  read  the  other  part. 
So  long  as  this  distinguished  critic  and 
scholar  confined  himself  to  the  specific 
criticism  of  the  plays  he  selected,  he  was 
admirable,  he  was  profound,  he  was  sugges- 
tive, he  was  illuminating;  when  he  wan- 
dered off  into  strange  theories,  the  employ- 
ment of  curious  terms,  I  felt  cold  and  sick 
at  heart.  One  of  the  most  stimulating 
lectures  I  ever  heard  as  a  student  was  his 
lecture  on  "The  Humour  of  Ben  Jonson," 
where  he  selected  those  most  difficult  plays, 
Every  Man  Out  of  his  Humour,  Cynthia's 
Revels,  and  The  Poetaster.  He  entirely 
changed  my  conception  of  these  literary 


Teaching  English  Literature      153 

curiosities,  and  I  obtained  permanent  ad- 
vantage. But  abstract  theories  are  out 
of  place  in  teaching  classes  something  so 
intensely  concrete  as  drama.  Teaching 
must  be  concrete,  for  that  is  what  seizes  and 
holds  the  attention.  How  many  sermons 
have  I  heard  that  were  killed  by  an  ab- 
stract opening.  "There  are  three  kinds  of 
truth :  scientific  truth,  historical  truth, 
and"  —  but  no  one  hears  the  third  kind,  for 
everybody  is  asleep.  But  if  a  preacher 
begins,  "Last  night  I  stood  on  the  corner  of 
Broadway  and  Fourteenth  Streets,  and  I  saw  " 
—  everyone  sits  up  ;  what  was  it  he  saw  ? 

The  plots  of  Shakespeare's  plays  can  be 
compared  with  well-known  contemporary 
plays  with  which  the  students  are  familiar ; 
and  when  an  actor  comes  to  the  university 
town,  and  produces  a  Shakespearean  play, 
the  students  should  be  urged  to  attend,  and 
to  observe  the  interpretation  of  characters 
and  passages  discussed  in  the  class.  All 
these  things  help  to  make  the  work  alive. 

Shakespeare    wrote    his    plays    not    for 


154     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

professors  to  teach,  or  for  scholars  to  edit 
with  introductions  and  notes,  but  because  he 
was  an  interpreter  of  Life.  This  is,  after 
all,  the  one  great  thing  to  which  all  learning, 
study,  and  annotation  are  subsidiary.  They 
have  their  place,  but  it  is  not  the  chief  place. 
No  matter  how  learned  a  teacher  or  critic 
may  be,  no  matter  how  profound  an  author- 
ity on  Shakespeare's  grammar,  language, 
and  contemporaiy  history,  if  he  is  more 
interested  in  these  things  than  he  is  in 
humanity,  he  cannot  teach,  and  he  cannot 
be  a  really  good  critic.  A  pedant  may 
miss  the  whole  point  of  a  scene  simply 
because  he  is  ignorant  of  human  nature. 
A  love  of  human  nature  and  a  knowledge  of 
it  are  the  essential  foundation  not  merely 
of  teaching,  but  of  Shakespearean  scholar- 
ship. Shakespeare's  main  subject,  the  main 
subject,  indeed,  of  nearly  all  great  poets,  is 
Humanity.  It  is  impossible,  therefore,  that 
the  opinion  of  a  learned  critic  who  knows 
nothing  of  men  and  women  can  be  valuable, 
because  in  spite  of  his  book  learning,  the  critic 


Teaching  English  Literature     155 

simply  does  not  know  what  Shakespeare 
is  talking  about.  Literature  deals  first, 
last,  and  all  the  time  with  Life.  Is  not  the 
life  more  than  meat,  and  the  body  than  the 
raiment  ?  When  I  was  a  sophomore  in  col- 
lege, studying  Sophokles  with  that  admir- 
able scholar  and  teacher,  Professor  Frank 
Tarbell,  I  had  to  write  an  essay  on  the  ques- 
tion, "Does  Sophokles  represent  QEdipus  as 
suffering  for  sin  ?"  I  read  the  Greek  text 
carefully  from  beginning  to  end,  outside  of 
the  classroom,  and  it  seemed  to  me  clear 
that  CEdipus  was  the  plaything  of  fate,  and 
that  the  idea  that  he  was  punished  for  his 
sins  was  ridiculous.  I  read  a  considerable 
number  of  English  critics  on  the  point,  and 
I  was  chilled  by  their  remote  attitude  toward 
so  passionate  and  human  a  struggle.  A 
few  years  later,  I  had  a  remarkable  conver- 
sation at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  with 
that  genial  Irishman,  Professor  Mahaffy  of 
Dublin.  "Why,"  said  he,  "the  matter 
with  most  of  these  fellows  who  write  about 
Greek  drama  is  that  they  don't  know 


156     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

anything  about  life,  about  men  and  women. 
They  spend  their  days  and  nights  in  a 
room."  Still,  how  is  it  possible  that  a  man 
can  spend  his  life  studying  Greek  Literature 
and  yet  know  so  little  about  humanity  ?  If 
he  cannot  learn  it  in  human  associations, 
the  wonder  is  that  he  does  not  get  it  from 
the  old  Greeks  themselves. 

I  do  not  believe  that  college  classes 
should  be  forced  to  learn  Shakespeare  by 
heart.  I  am  obliged  reluctantly  to  disagree 
with  some  of  the  best  teachers  on  this 
question.  Professor  Child  always  selected 
a  considerable  number  of  passages  from  the 
plays,  and  required  the  memorising  of  them 
from  every  student.  Each  semiannual  ex- 
amination had  a  part  of  it  devoted  to  verbal 
memorising.  This  has  always  been  easy 
for  me,  although  I  found  it  easier  as  a  boy 
than  I  do  as  a  man.  But  there  are  many 
college  students  who  simply  cannot  learn 
passages  by  heart,  or  who  succeed  in  learning 
them  only  by  prodigious  effort,  the  result 
not  being  worth  the  trouble.  I  should 


Teaching  English  Literature      157 

always  recommend  certain  passages  to  be 
committed  to  memory,  and  perhaps  give 
extra  credit.  And  I  think  it  is  desirable 
that  every  examination  paper  dealing  with 
Literature,  except  where  a  great  mass  of 
poetry  and  prose  has  been  read  rapidly, 
should  contain  quoted  passages,  the  student 
being  required  to  locate  them,  to  state  who 
spoke  them,  or  to  comment  upon  them  in- 
telligently. 

Teaching  Nineteenth-century  Literature  is 
more  difficult  than  teaching  Shakespeare, 
there  being  far  less  annotation  required, 
and  far  less  verbal  difficulties  that  demand 
elucidation.  But  if  the  author  before  the 
class  is  constantly  kept  in  touch  with  life, 
immense  good  may  be  accomplished.  An 
hour  can  be  spent,  if  necessary,  on  Brown- 
ing's Meeting  at  Night  and  Parting  at 
Morning.  The  cultivation  of  true  criticism, 
the  interpretation  of  the  author's  meaning, 
the  development  of  the  love  of  reading, 
these  should  ever  be  the  teacher's  goal. 
And  while  he  should  never  force  on  the 


158     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

class  his  own  opinions  of  literature  or  his 
own  interpretations,  he  should  not  be  afraid 
to  express  them  clearly  and  boldly,  after  he 
has  sought  to  bring  out  ideas  from  the 
students.  We  hear  a  great  deal  said  against 
sign-post  criticism,  but  it  is  absolutely 
true  that  many  students  do  not  see  the 
beauty  or  significance  of  a  passage  until  it 
is  called  to  their  attention.  I  read  some- 
where that  beauties  that  have  to  be  pointed 
out  are  not  beauties  at  all.  What  nonsense  ! 
How  many  people  see  all  there  is  in  a  picture, 
a  symphony,  or  a  poem  without  expert 
assistance  ?  The  teacher  must  be  a  leader 
and  a  guide  as  well  as  a  drill-master  or  a 
mere  raiser  of  dust. 

When  a  historical  course  in  literature  is 
taught,  like  English  Literature  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  Elizabethan  Drama, 
or  American  Literature,  it  is  eminently 
desirable,  if  there  be  time  for  it,  and  the 
teacher  have  sufficient  energy  to  read  the 
themes,  that  some  original  critical  written 
work  be  regularly  required  from  the  pupils. 


Teaching  English  Literature      159 

Once  in  a  while,  it  is  well  to  have  a  student 
read  aloud  his  essay  to  the  class :  it  gives 
him  a  mysterious  but  powerful  intellectual 
stimulus  to  do  this,  and  so  long  as  he 
lives,  he  will  not  forget  the  experience. 
When  the  teacher  reads  specimen  themes 
to  the  class,  which  he  should  do  regularly, 
the  names  of  the  writers  should,  of  course, 
never  be  mentioned.  Nor  should  the 
teacher  follow  the  example  of  one  in- 
structor whose  class  I  attended.  There  were 
two  hundred  students  in  the  room,  and  he 
began  the  hour  by  announcing,  "  I  will  read 
four  themes,  as  follows,"  giving  the  heading 
of  each  one  of  the  four  essays  in  advance. 
The  result  was  that  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
six  students  immediately  showed  signs  of 
general  lassitude.  They  knew  their  efforts 
were  not  to  be  heard.  Announce  one  theme 
at  a  time.  After  it  is  finished,  every  student 
in  the  room  has  a  mild  excitement  akin  to 
owning  a  lottery  ticket :  will  my  theme  come 
next?  It  is  always  the  teacher's  duty  to 
keep  up  the  tension  in  the  classroom  by  any 
legitimate  method. 


160     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

An  excellent  scheme  for  making  the 
students  read  their  lessons  attentively,  study 
carefully  the  peculiar  individual  literary 
style  of  each  author,  and  receive  definite 
profit  from  such  study,  is  to  require  a  short 
written  imitation  of  each  author  in  the 
course,  the  prose  masters  primarily,  though 
optional  work  can  be  assigned  in  the  poets. 
I  taught  sophomores  once  a  general  histori- 
cal course  in  English  Literature.  When  we 
were  reading  the  Faerie  Queene,  I  gave  an 
opportunity  for  the  composition  of  Spen- 
serian stanzas  having  an  archaic  flavour : 
a  large  number  of  students  took  advantage 
of  this,  and  I  think  they  learned  in  that  way 
the  technical  scheme  of  the  stanza  better 
than  they  could  have  by  any  memorising, 
either  of  the  rime  order  or  of  the  poetry. 
When  we  came  to  Bacon,  they  wrote 
short  essays,  trying  to  catch  the  super- 
ficial peculiarities  of  his  style ;  when  we 
reached  Addison,  they  wrote  imaginary 
Spectator  papers.  The  results  of  this 
method  convinced  me  of  its  efficiency. 


Teaching  English  Literature      161 

And  the  students  obtained  much  innocent 
amusement  from  their  own  and  their  class- 
mates' efforts.  A  successful  parody  is  often 
the  best  kind  of  criticism.  Swinburne's 
John  Jones  is  worth  a  dozen  volumes  di- 
rected against  Browning's  obscurity,  harsh 
diction,  and  whimsical  rimes. 

All  students  of  English  Literature,  both  in 
school  and  college,  should  be  forced  to  learn 
the  geography  of  England.  But  this  reform 
must  begin  at  the  other  end.  The  ignorance 
of  American  teachers  is  scandalous.  I  hap- 
pened to  have  the  honour  of  addressing 
several  hundred  teachers  on  a  certain  occa- 
sion, and  I  found  that  only  two  or  three  knew 
anything  whatever  of  this  matter.  We  often 
laugh  at  Englishmen  for  their  grotesque 
errors  in  speaking  of  towns  and  states  in 
America,  but  our  own  ignorance  of  England 
is  more  general,  more  profound,  and  in- 
finitely less  excusable.  Every  teacher  of 
English  Literature  in  school  or  college  who 
can  possibly  find  the  money  should  regard 
it  as  a  necessary  part  of  his  equipment  as 


1 62     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

a  scholar  to  visit  England  and  study  the 
literary  geography  of  the  country.  It  is 
just  as  scholarly  to  do  this,  and  often  more 
valuable,  than  it  is  to  spend  a  whole  summer 
poring  over  old  books  and  manuscripts  in  the 
British  Museum,  and  I  have  made  it  a 
point  to  do  both  and  hope  to  do  both 
again.  College  students  are  densely,  abys- 
mally ignorant  of  the  counties  of  England : 
the  names  mean  absolutely  nothing  to 
them.  You  say,  "Tennyson  was  a  Lincoln- 
shire man,"  which  ought  to  mean  something  : 
it  means  nothing.  I  now  require  of  every 
student  an  elementary  knowledge  of  English 
geography,  so  that  at  least  they  will  re- 
member that  York  and  Devon  are  two  quite 
different  places.  I  have  been  in  every 
county  in  England,  in  many  of  them  on  a 
bicycle,  and  I  am  sure  that  I  understand 
English  Literature  better  and  can  teach  it 
more  intelligently  than  I  could  without 
this  knowledge.  English  Literature  should 
be  studied  and  taught  with  a  map.  And  a 
teacher  should  encourage  his  students,  when 


Teaching  English  Literature      163 

they  go  abroad  in  the  summer,  as  so  many 
do  now,  to  make  literary  pilgrimages,  in- 
stead of  spending  the  precious  time  dawdling 
about  hotels. 

It  ought  to  be  superfluous  to  say  that 
every  teacher  of  English  Literature  should 
be  a  man  or  woman  of  sound  culture ;  but 
unfortunately  this  is  not  always  the  case. 
Under  the  modern  strain  after  the  Ph.D., 
our  universities  are  sending  out  many 
teachers  who  are  not  even  well-read. 
Graduate  students  should  spend  plenty  of 
time  in  reading,  in  filling  up  the  great  gaps 
in  their  knowledge  of  literature.  I  know 
one  excellent  linguistic  scholar  who  was 
suddenly  called  upon  to  teach  courses  in 
English  Literature.  He  had  to  read  six 
hours  a  day  just  to  keep  ahead  of  his 
classes.  Another  young  brilliant  doctor, 
who  obtained  a  post  in  an  Eastern  college, 
wrote  back  to  me,  "For  Heaven's  sake, 
make  the  graduate  students  read  !  I  don't 
know  anything." 

Although  the  requirement  of  the  doctor's 


164     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

degree  has  become  a  fetich,  it  serves  a  good 
purpose.  Every  man  or  woman  who  intends 
to  teach  in  a  college  should  have  performed 
one  solid,  original  piece  of  genuine  scholarly 
work.  Not  only  has  he  mastered  one  definite 
thing,  but  in  the  process  he  has  learned  how  to 
work,  he  has  learned  the  use  of  the  essential 
tools  of  scholarship,  and  he  has  a  scholarly 
ideal.  But  along  with  this  and  no  matter 
how  minute  may  be  the  particular  subject 
of  his  thesis,  he  should  read  and  read,  and 
be  familiar  with  English  Literature.  How 
unfortunate  it  is  that  such  a  point  should 
require  any  emphasis  !  No  doctor's  degree 
should  be  given  unless  the  candidate  can 
read  French  and  German  easily  —  the  latter 
is  a  rare  accomplishment  —  and  unless  the 
candidate  has  passed  an  oral  examination 
in  the  presence  of  the  professors  of  the 
department,  not  on  a  manual  of  English 
Literature,  but  in  English  authors. 

But  important  as  the  doctorate  is,  no 
college  or  university  should  refuse  to  ap- 
point a  man  to  the  teaching  staff,  or  to 


Teaching  English  Literature     165 

refuse  advancement  to  him,  simply  because 
he  has  not  been  branded  with  the  sign.  If 
he  can  give  satisfactory  evidence  of  his 
scholarship,  culture,  and  ability  to  teach, 
it  would  be  silly  to  insist  on  the  degree.  The 
man  from  whom  I  learned  more  English 
Literature  than  from  any  other,  Professor 
Henry  A.  Beers  of  Yale,  has  never  taken  nor 
received  a  doctorate,  but  his  scholarship 
is  varied,  accurate,  and  profound.  He  is 
an  excellent  example  of  what  I  mean  by 
sound  culture.  When  I  was  a  graduate 
student,  I  took  an  ideal  course  with  him 
(in  the  literature  of  the  Restoration),  a 
course  in  which  I  was  the  only  pupil.  I 
read  under  his  direction,  and  brought  my 
notes  to  him  at  stated  intervals.  His 
learning  and  judicious  criticism  were  a 
wonderful  combined  corrective  and  stimulus 
to  my  enthusiasm.  And,  now  that  I  am 
getting  personal,  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
critics  and  teachers  of  literature  that  I 
ever  knew,  Professor  Lewis  Gates  of  Har- 
vard, was  no  doctor;  neither  is  Professor 


1 66     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

George  Baker,  the  quality  of  whose  scholar- 
ship and  teaching  is  beyond  question ;  and 
the  situation  becomes  positively  funny, 
when  we  remember  that  Professor  Kittredge, 
the  most  erudite  English  scholar  in  America, 
whose  name  is  in  the  prefaces  of  hundreds  of 
important  books,  never  received  the  Ph.D. 
in  course.  Perhaps  these  men  would  all  in- 
sist on  it  now :  as  to  that,  I  do  not  know. 
I  merely  remark  that  actual  scholarship  is 
more  important  than  the  sign  and  seal. 

The  number  and  variety  of  courses  in 
English  Literature  are  now  a  notable  feature 
of  every  college  catalogue;  every  student 
feels  that  he  must  take  "English."  There 
is  a  practical  reason  for  this  which  appeals 
to  the  student  mind.  It  is  simply  the  fact 
that  every  college  graduate  is  supposed  to 
have  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  history  of 
English  Literature  and  of  its  masterpieces. 
Most  of  our  graduates  live  in  civilised 
communities,  and  in  social  relations  with 
intelligent  people.  A  large  staple  of  con- 


Teaching  English  Literature      167 

versation  consists  of  books  and  reading; 
the  exchange  of  views  on  poets  and  novelists 
is  one  of  the  great  clearing  houses  of  human 
intercourse.  A  man  with  no  taste  in  reading 
and  with  no  knowledge  of  English  Literature 
has  no  real  place  in  modern  civilisation. 
He  is  just  as  grotesque  —  just  as  much  out 
of  his  element  in  modern  life  as  a  South  Sea 
Islander  would  be  in  a  Fifth  Avenue  draw- 
ing-room. 

But  while  this  constitutes  a  strong  practi- 
cal motive  for  electing  English,  it  is,  after 
all,  the  least  important  reason  for  doing  so. 
It  is,  indeed,  properly  analysed,  a  Philistine 
impulse  —  the  desire  to  obtain  as  much 
practical  benefit  as  may  be,  with  the  least 
amount  of  unpleasant  exertion.  The  real 
driving  purpose  of  a  student  who  enters 
upon  a  year's  work  in  an  English  course 
should  be  higher  and  nobler  than  that; 
and  the  professor  should  not  teach  literature 
from  the  bargain-counter  point  of  view. 
James  Russell  Lowell  said  that  the  chief 
glory  of  a  college  education  was  that  it 


1 68     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

taught  nothing  useful  —  and  I  find  myself 
in  hearty  agreement  with  the  truth  under- 
lying this  paradox.  The  study  of  English 
Literature  is  not  intended  to  enhance  a 
man's  social  value,  and  the  study  of  English 
composition  is  not  intended  to  produce 
creative  writers ;  any  more  than  the  study 
of  Geology  is  meant  to  make  successful 
miners,  or  the  study  of  Political  Science 
to  produce  capitalists.  I  suppose  the  two 
greatest  teachers  of  Political  Science  this 
country  has  ever  seen  were  Professor 
W.  G.  Sumner  and  Professor  Arthur  T. 
Hadley,  both  of  Yale.  I  had  the  privilege 
of  studying  under  both  men,  as  an  under- 
graduate and  as  a  graduate  student.  Yet 
I  think  I  have  no  more  cash  in  my 
pocket  now  than  if  I  had  never  attended 
their  courses.  But  the  remarks  of  those 
teachers  in  the  classroom  —  the  superfluous 
wealth  of  splendid  minds  —  are  part  of  my 
mental  furniture  to  this  day. 

Literature  is  the  immortal  part  of  history. 
It  is  the  interpretation  of  life.     The  serious 


Teaching  English  Literature      169 

study  of  literature  increases  immensely  a 
man's  grasp  of  life's  great  problems,  and 
it  does  more  —  in  the  language  of  the  poet,  it 
makes  a  man's  reach  exceed  his  grasp  —  and 
what  does  Philistine  America  need  more  than 
that  ?  This  is,  perhaps,  why  a  leading  pro- 
fessor of  Civil  Engineering  said  that  the  best 
undergraduate  course  a  student  could  take 
was  any  course  except  Engineering.  I  also 
heard  a  successful  engineer,  who  had  forty 
practical  young  engineers  under  his  control, 
say  that  the  chief  thing  these  ambitious 
men  needed  was  a  genuine  preliminary 
academic  training,  the  lack  of  which  was 
cruelly  evident  in  their  work  and  in  their 
ideas. 

President  Timothy  Dwight  told  us  in  our 
senior  year  that  the  happiest  man  is  the 
man  who  thinks  the  most  interesting 
thoughts.  This  definition  of  happiness  has 
not  only  been  of  immense  service  to  me,  but 
I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  passing  it  on  to 
many  hundred  men  and  women.  It  con- 
stitutes, I  think,  the  best  possible  defence 


170     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

of  a  college  education  in  general,  and  of  the 
study  of  literature  in  particular.  A  man 
who  studies  literature  is  forever  hanging 
pictures  on  the  walls  of  his  mind :  life  be- 
comes to  him  more  interesting,  and,  therefore, 
more  happy  as  he  grows  older.  His  favourite 
authors  are  both  a  refuge  and  an  inspiration. 
And  every  undergraduate  who  finishes  a 
course  in  English  Literature  should  feel 
not  that  he  has  completed  that  course,  but 
that  he  has  begun  it.  If  a  man  does  not 
have  the  love  of  good  reading  in  college,  it 
is  probable  that  he  will  not  acquire  it  later ; 
the  terrible  cutthroat  competition  of  modern 
business  and  professional  life  will  conquer 
and  dominate  his  soul.  He  may  become 
a  first-class  business  or  legal  machine;  he 
will  never  become  a  man.  On  the  other 
hand  if  one  really  learns  to  appreciate  and 
to  enjoy  literature  while  in  school  or  college, 
one  will  always  find  or  make  leisure  hours 
for  it  later.  Men  usually  do  what  they 
really  want  to  do ;  for  where  your  treasure 
is,  there  will  your  heart  be  also. 


X 

THE    MORAL   ASPECT   OF   TEACHING 

NO  progression  is  possible  without  some 
loss.  Every  change,  every  advance, 
no  matter  how  necessary,  no  matter  how 
salutary,  is  accompanied  by  the  subtraction 
of  something  valuable.  In  contemplating 
any  reform,  any  forward  movement  in 
religion,  politics,  social  life,  or  education, 
those  who  see  only  the  gain  in  the  new  condi- 
tions are  the  Radicals ;  those  who  see  only 
what  has  been  or  is  to  be  lost  are  the  Con- 
servatives. The  question  for  every  thought- 
ful person,  after  counting  the  cost  of  a 
proposed  new  scheme,  is  to  consider  whether 
or  not  the  gain  will  outweigh  the  loss. 

In  educational  affairs,  I  have  no  doubt  that 
the  elective  system  is  an  enormous  improve- 
ment over  the  old  cast-iron  required  pro- 
gramme: the  introduction  of  Science,  His- 

171 


172     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

tory,  Literature,  Economics,  and  Art  simply 
had  to  come.  By  the  natural  law  of  reaction, 
most  of  us  went  too  far  in  the  new  direction, 
and  those  of  us  who  believed  in  absolutely 
free  electives  had  to  haul  in  our  horns,  and 
endeavour  to  regain  some  of  the  good  we  had 
lost.  Now  we  are  crawling  back,  though  we 
shall  never  cramp  ourselves  with  the  old 
fetters.  Ultimate  progress  is  not  straight 
up,  but  by  a  spiral  movement;  for  the 
most  practicable  way  to  reach  the  loftiest 
heights  with  our  human  limitations  is  not 
by  direct  scaling,  but  by  a  winding  ascent. 
As  compared  with  fifty  years  ago,  a  great 
change  has  come  over  the  appearance,  dress, 
manners,  conversation,  and  habits  of  the 
teacher,  especially  of  the  college  professor. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  a  modern  faculty  meet- 
ing presents  a  quite  different  picture  from 
that  of  former  times.  Whatever  the  old 
professor  actually  was,  he  used  to  look  like 
a  guileless  pedant ;  now  he  strives  to  be 
and  to  look  like  a  man  of  the  world. 
When  I  was  a  freshman,  some  of  our  pro- 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching      173 

fessors  appeared  in  the  classroom  clad  in  a 
long,  black  frock-coat,  built  of  broadcloth ; 
the  modern  professor  wears  the  same  kind  of 
garments,  next  to  his  skin  and  next  to  the 
air,  as  those  worn  by  the  undergraduate. 
A  man  who  entered  upon  the  profession  of 
teaching  in  the  old  times  used  to  be  regarded 
as  a  nun  that  takes  the  veil  :  his  more 
worldly  friends  admired  the  sincerity  and 
high  purpose  proved  by  such  a  resolution, 
but  felt,  also,  a  compound  of  pity  and  regret. 
This  unworldly,  unpractical,  eccentric  type 
of  professor  survives  now  chiefly  upon  the 
stage,  both  in  Europe  and  in  America.  One 
sees  him  often  in  the  glare  of  the  footlights, 
but  rarely  in  real  life. 

The  modern  professor  is  afraid  of  cant, 
afraid  of  being  taken  too  seriously,  afraid  to 
preach,  but  not  afraid  of  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness.  He  is  a  member  of  clubs, 
and  speaks  the  language  of  common  life. 
He  does  not  smell  of  his  job,  does  not  talk 
shop  except  with  his  colleagues,  and  the 
shrewd  man  of  business  who  meets  him 


174     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

casually  does  not  guess  his  calling.  This 
complete  transformation  from  the  scholarly 
recluse  to  the  man  of  the  world  has  been 
accompanied  with  many  distinct  advantages. 
Professor  and  student  meet  on  common 
ground,  without  embarrassment,  and  with- 
out that  secret  contempt  for  each  other  that 
men  of  quite  different  interests  often  have. 
The  humanising  of  the  professor  helps 
him  also  in  his  relations  with  the  parents  of 
students,  and  in  all  his  associations  with  the 
citizens  of  the  town  where  he  dwells. 

It  is  desirable  for  the  professor  to  be 
human  and  normal  in  appearance,  manner, 
and  conversation ;  he  has  a  mission  as  truly 
as  the  minister  of  the  Gospel.  There  are 
certain  forms  of  religion  where  the  clergyman 
must  wear  a  uniform ;  whatever  may  be 
the  decided  advantages  of  this,  and  there 
are  many,  they  are  outweighed  in  my  judg- 
ment by  the  fact  that  everybody  simulates 
a  respect  for  the  cloth,  and  it  thus  becomes 
more  difficult  to  know  men  as  they  really  are. 
The  little  group  changes  the  conversation 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching      175 

when  the  man  of  God  appears.  This  does 
not  apply  to  the  Roman  Catholic  priest, 
who  performs  every  day  valiant  and  noble 
police  duty.  He  goes  with  authority  straight 
into  the  households  of  his  parish,  just  when 
they  are  least  expecting  a  visit.  A  priest 
told  me,  and  he  was  a  wise  and  excellent 
man,  that  his  country  parishioners  said  to 
him,  "Let  us  know  when  you  are  going 
to  call."  "You  bet  I  won't !"  said  he.  But 
the  Protestant  clergyman  who  wears  a  long 
coat  and  a  white  tie  throws  away  his 
weapons.  His  chief  business  is  with  the 
ungodly ;  but  if  the  ungodly  can  see  him  a 
hundred  yards  away,  the  ungodly  have  time 
to  escape. 

If  only  this  desirable  process  of  humanis- 
ing is  not  accompanied  by  a  subtle  moral  de- 
terioration, by  a  lack  of  conviction,  by  a  loss 
of  high  seriousness  at  heart,  by  a  weakening 
of  the  motive  for  great  and  unselfish  ser- 
vice !  A  man  is  a  fool  to  take  himself  too 
seriously;  but  no  man  can  take  his  life 
work  too  seriously.  There  are  some  profes- 


176     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

SOTS  to-day,  in  various  parts  of  our  country, 
who  cultivate  a  flippancy  in  their  attitude 
toward  their  work,  in  their  attitude  toward 
their  pupils,  and  in  their  attitude  toward 
themselves.  I  have  even  read  flippant  in- 
troductions to  what  are  supposed  to  be 
scholarly  publications.  I  do  not  mean 
humorous  and  charming  prefaces,  such  as 
that  wonderful  old  man,  Dr.  Furnivall,  used 
to  write :  no,  I  mean  a  tone  quite  different 
from  that. 

The  hatred  of  cant  has  reached  such  a 
plane  to-day  that  many  men  are  afraid  to 
express  any  moral  convictions,  and  if  they 
do,  are  said  to  have  no  sense  of  humour. 
There  are  a  considerable  number  who  would 
rather  be  regarded  as  wicked,  rather  be 
regarded  as  fools,  than  incur  the  danger  of  a 
reputation  of  preaching.  It  is  difficult  for 
any  man,  who  looks  into  his  own  heart,  to 
give  moral  advice  to  another;  but  if  he 
gives  it  only  when  it  is  sought,  he  should 
not  be  ashamed  to  express  what  he  deeply 
believes  to  be  true.  This  is  especially 


,The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching     177 

applicable  to  a  teacher  in  his  personal  re- 
lations with  students.  There  are  some 
who  will  tell  a  student  he  had  better  not 
gamble,  drink  to  excess,  and  cultivate  evil 
associations,  and  then  hasten  to  add  :  "Of 
course  I  see  no  moral  objection  to  these 
things.  It  is  simply  on  the  ground  of  your 
health,  from  the  point  of  view  of  common 
prudence,  that  I  am  speaking."  The 
fallacy  of  all  this  lies  in  the  fact  that  we 
encourage  our  students  to  love  the  truth, 
and  to  follow  it  regardless  of  personal  dis- 
comfort, peril,  and  pain ;  why,  then,  should 
we  tell  them  that  the  only  good  reason  for 
avoiding  sin  is  because  it  is  bad  for  their 
health,  and  injurious  to  their  career  ? 
Furthermore,  I  believe  that  the  average 
student  is  more  strongly  deterred  from  vice 
by  a  belief  that  it  is  wrong  than  he  is  by  any 
consideration  for  his  health  or  his  future 
prospects.  Whatever  may  be  the  case 
with  the  wise  children  of  this  world,  it  is 
moral  and  religious  training  that  keeps 
students  straight,  and  not  questions  of 


178     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

sociology  and  hygiene.  As  a  class,  they 
are  not  selfish  enough  to  be  forever  thinking 
of  their  health,  but  are  gloriously  imprudent. 
Hygiene  can  never  take  the  place  of  religion 
in  the  education  of  youth. 

No  intellectually  honest  man  can  have 
religious  and  moral  convictions  merely  by  an 
effort  of  will ;  but  it  is  an  enormous  ad- 
vantage for  a  teacher  to  believe  in  something 
and  to  believe  in  it  with  all  his  might.  You 
often  see  teachers  smile  to-day  at  the  old- 
style  college  president,  who  was  a  clergy- 
man, either  active  or  ex,  and  who  taught 
moral  philosophy.  But  those  brave  old 
captains  in  the  army  of  righteousness  used 
in  some  institutions  to  exercise  a  powerful 
influence  for  good,  and  to  give  tone  to  the 
whole  place.  A  teacher  who,  whatever 
his  doubts  and  individual  peculiarities  of 
faith,  is  at  heart  a  sincere  Christian,  has 
frequent  and  wonderful  opportunities  to 
influence  students  toward  those  things  that 
men  of  all  creeds  recognise  as  good 
things. 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching      179 

Yet  I  do  not  agree  with  one  college  presi- 
dent who  in  a  public  address  said  that  no 
instructor  or  professor  should  be  admitted 
to  the  institution  who  was  not  a  "professing 
Christian."  Truth  is  free,  and  every  aspect 
of  it  important.  I  know  too  many  ex- 
cellent college  professors,  men  of  high 
intellectual  standing,  who  have  no  reli- 
gious belief,  for  me  to  subscribe  to  any 
such  statement  as  that.  Furthermore,  the 
students  will  soon  find  out,  if  they  have 
any  of  that  intellectual  curiosity  which  it 
should  be  the  teacher's  delight  to  arouse 
and  stimulate  in  them,  that  there  are  printed 
views  just  the  opposite  of  those  that  they 
are  taught,  and  that  they  are  held  by  men  of 
at  least  equal  intellectual  and  moral  standing 
as  their  religious  professors.  It  is  impor- 
tant that  students  in  a  university  should 
become  familiar  right  there  with  the  views 
of  history,  philosophy,  and  religion  held  by 
professors  who  absolutely  disagree  with 
those  of  us  who  are  Christians.  And  when 
we  allude  to  books  or  to  professors  that 


180     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

hold  opinions  that  we  emphatically  reject, 
care  should  be  taken  to  see  that  we  do  not 
misrepresent  these  opinions  to  our  students, 
underestimate  their  force,  or  attempt  to 
belittle  their  importance.  A  student  loves 
fair  play  and  an  honest  antagonist.  Im- 
mensely as  I  admire  Browning,  I  think  he 
was  unfortunate  in  his  statement  that  fools 
disbelieve  in  immortality.  I  know  many 
men  who  are  certainly  not  fools,  but  who 
believe  that  death  ends  all.  Give  every 
aspect  of  the  truth  a  fair  chance  in  a  fair 
field.  The  Christian  ought  to  be  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  be  afraid  of  the  truth, 
for  he  has  a  philosophical  basis,  and  thus  a 
good  reason,  for  believing  in  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  truth.  A  Christian  wants  to 
know  the  truth,  cost  what  it  will.  To 
borrow  an  idea  from  Mill,  the  man  whose 
fear  of  consequences  is  stronger  than  his 
love  of  truth  has  no  business  to  be  a  teacher. 
The  teacher  must  be  free,  and  allow  others 
to  be  so. 

Tennyson  says, — 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching      181 

And  dare  we  to  this  fancy  give, 

That  had  the  wild  oat  not  been  sown, 
The  soil,  left  barren,  scarce  had  grown 

The  grain  by  which  a  man  may  live  ? 

Or,  if  we  held  the  doctrine  sound 
For  life  outliving  heats  of  youth, 
Yet  who  would  preach  it  as  a  truth 

To  those  that  eddy  round  and  round  ? 

Well,  I  would,  for  one!  I  do  not  believe 
in  telling  young  men  and  women  falsehoods 
because  they  might  go  to  the  devil  if  they 
knew  the  truth.  If  I  really  believed  that 
dissipation  were  good  for  the  average  young 
man,  I  would  frankly  tell  him  so.  But  the 
facts  are  just  the  other  way,  as  is  shown  by 
the  attitude  of  those  fathers  who,  when  they 
were  in  college,  lived  vicious  lives ;  are 
they  eager  to  have  their  children  follow  their 
example  in  this  respect  ?  Because  some  of 
them  have  subsequently  mastered  their 
vices,  and  are  now  useful  citizens,  do  they 
or  do  they  not  believe  that  these  sins  have 
done  them  good,  and  assisted  them  in  their 


1 82     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

life  progress  ?  If  they  do,  they  would  re- 
joice to  have  their  sons  idle  and  dissipated, 
instead  of  sober  and  industrious.  When 
they  receive  a  letter  from  the  dean,  "I 
regret  to  say  that  your  son  was  drunk  last 
Saturday  night,"  they  would  feel  happier 
than  if  he  had  won  a  prize.  They  would 
exclaim,  "This  is  splendid  !  he  is  learning 
life ;  he  is  by  way  of  becoming  a  man."  I 
once  met  a  gentleman  on  the  train,  and,  after 
a  long  conversation  and  many  questions,  he 
finally  discovered  that  I  was  a  college  pro- 
fessor. He  was  highly  interested,  and  said 
eagerly:  "My  son  is  going  to  Cornell  next 
year.  What  kind  of  a  university  is  it  ?  Do 
you  think  there  is  much  bumming  there  ? " 
He  fairly  hung  on  my  words  as  I  answered 
him.  I  said,  "Cornell  is  a  university  of  the 
first  class ;  there  are  many  students ;  it  is 
like  other  great  universities,  containing  all 
kinds  of  young  men,  some  noble,  ambitious, 
and  clean ;  others  merely  ordinary ;  others 
lazy,  idle,  and  dissipated."  The  fond 
parent  then  remarked,  "When  I  was  a 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching     183 

young  man,  I  was  a  terrible  sport,  but  I 
cannot  bear  to  think  that  my  son  should  do 
the  things  that  I  did." 

Although  I  believe  that  it  is  well  to  have 
all  shades  of  thought  represented  on  the 
faculty  of  a  large  university,  I  would  not  vote 
for  a  college  dean  who  was  not  a  Christian. 
I  regard  a  Christian  faith  as  one  of  his  as- 
sets, or,  in  other  words,  one  of  the  essential 
qualifications  for  the  position,  like  a  knowl- 
edge of  Mathematics  for  Civil  Engineering. 
He  is  not  only  the  chief  of  police,  he  is  the 
student's  friend,  intimate  adviser  and  coun- 
sellor. If  ever  a  man  needs  religion  in  his 
work,  it  is  the  dean.  Now  by  religion  I 
do  not  mean  a  heavenly  life  insurance 
policy,  which  a  man  sees  to  once  for  all, 
and  then  goes  about  his  daily  task :  I  mean 
a  life  principle.  Religion  is  a  jealous  thing : 
it  must  either  have  first  place  in  a  man's 
heart,  or  no  place.  It  cannot  be  subordinate 
to  any  other  aim,  impulse,  or  passion.  It 
accepts  no  compromises.  It  must  either 
be  the  master  of  a  man,  his  great  guiding 


184     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

principle,  or  it  is  worse  than  worthless. 
Christianity  is  either  the  most  important 
fact  in  the  world,  or  it  is  a  myth,  like  the 
stories  of  Mars  and  Venus.  Thus  I  believe 
that  the  so-called  denominational  colleges 
have  accomplished  and  are  accomplishing 
vast  results  for  good  in  our  country.  For 
they  really  believe  in  something,  and  stand 
for  something.  I  hope  it  is  not  true,  as  is 
often  stated,  that  some  of  them  have 
really  changed  their  principles  to  obtain 
money,  selling  their  birthright  for  a  mess 
of  pottage. 

Whatever  may  be  our  notion  of  a  college 
education,  and  almost  every  expert  has  a 
different  one,  culture  without  character  is 
a  poor  thing.  Unless  the  majority  of 
students  are  actually  better  men  when  they 
graduate  than  when  they  enter,  the  college 
is  a  failure. 

There  is  a  lot  of  nonsense  talked  about 
"compulsory"  chapel,  and  "compulsory" 
religious  exercises  in  college.  These  are 
really  not  compulsory  at  all,  any  more  than 


The  Moral  Aspect  of  Teaching      185 

a  college  education  is  compulsory.  If  a 
boy  or  his  parents  do  not  wish  that  he  be 
required  to  listen  to  a  chapter  of  the  Bible 
and  a  prayer,  let  him  go  to  another  in- 
stitution where  he  will  not  be  annoyed. 
But  what  better  way  is  there  of  beginning  a 
day  of  college  life  than  by  hearing  a  portion 
of  the  best  literature  that  the  world  has  ever 
known,  and  then  asking  Divine  help  and 
inspiration  for  the  day's  problems  ?  My 
belief  in  daily  chapel  is  not  based  on  its 
democracy,  or  on  the  power  of  numbers,  or 
on  the  value  of  making  all  the  students 
get  up  early  in  the  morning,  though  these 
are  splendid  by-products :  my  belief  in  it 
is  based  on  the  belief  that  the  foundation  of 
a  college  education  should  be  religious. 

There  is  a  passage  in  the  New  Testament 
that  every  good  teacher  understands.  It 
describes  how  Some  One,  looking  on  a 
young  man,  loved  him.  When  I  think  of  the 
college  generations  of  young  men,  manly, 
wholesome,  unaffected,  clean-hearted,  that 
have  passed  through  my  classrooms,  I  often 


1 86     Teaching  in  School  and  College 

think  that  I  have  learned  more  from  them 
than  I  have  given.  What  fine  fellows  they 
are,  and  what  a  privilege  for  a  teacher  to  live 
in  the  presence  of  perpetual  youth  !  And 
when  some  individual  student,  all  aglow  with 
the  light  of  intellectual  dawn,  comes  to  me 
and  asks  some  question,  I  cannot  help  feeling 
the  same  emotion  that  stirred  the  heart  of 
the  greatest  Teacher  in  all  history  —  I  look 
on  the  young  man  and  I  love  him. 


''I ""HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of 
•*•    books  by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects. 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Essays  on  Modern  Novelists 

Cloth    2()4  pages    Price,  $i  .50  net    Post  paid,  $1.39 

Professor  Phelps  opens  the  book  with  a  discussion  of  William 
De  Morgan,  whom  he  analyzes  closely,  dwelling  on  his  remark- 
able personality,  and  comparing  his  art  with  that  of  Dickens. 
From  De  Morgan  he  passes  to  Thomas  Hardy,  keenly  consider- 
ing all  of  his  output  and  showing  without  prejudice  the  good 
and  the  bad.  Hardy's  pessimism  is  shown  to  be  the  ground 
principle  in  his  novels,  with  his  firm  conviction  that  "  morally 
men  and  women  are  immensely  superior  to  God."  Other  rep- 
resentative modern  novelists  to  whom  separate  essays  are 
devoted  are  Howells,  Mark  Twain,  Bjornson,  Sienkiewicz, 
Sudermann,  Ollivant,  Stevenson,  Blackmore,  Kipling,  and  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward.  The  chapter  on  Mrs.  Ward  presents  an  en- 
tirely different  view  of  her  work  and  talents  from  that  taken  by 
conventional  criticism.  This  original  and  searching  analysis  has 
already  aroused  much  comment  both  in  England  and  in  America. 
The  volume  closes  with  a  discussion  of  "  Novels  as  a  University 
Study"  and  "The  Teacher's  Attitude  toward  Contemporary 
Literature."  A  complete  list  of  publications,  with  dates,  of  all 
the  authors  treated  in  the  work,  is  included. 

Man  liest  diesen  Musterband  nordamerikanischer  Literatur- 
kritik  mit  steigender  Sympathie  fur  des  Verf.  Personlichkeit 
und  mit  dem  lebhaften  Interesse,  welches  er  als  Kundgebung 
des  Volkscharakters  erwecken  muss :  er  beweist  wieder  einmal 
ad  oculos  die  Wesenseinheit  von  Englander-  und  Amerikaner- 
tum  auf  der  gemeinsamen  geschichtlichen  Grundlage  des 
Puritanismus.  —  Allgemeines  Liter aturblatt. 

Professor  Phelps's  method  of  treatment  is  gentle,  kindly,  but 
shrewdly  penetrative,  so  that  the  reader  will  find  himself  in 
sympathy  with  his  judgments.  —  Independent. 

Professor  Phelps  is  certainly  a  master  in  the  art  of  saying  much 
in  little.  In  a  few  pages,  with  clear,  concise  sentences,  an 
epigram  here,  a  sly  suggestion  there,  a  personality  is  limned 
for  you  within  thumb-nail  limits.  ...  A  book  that  is  amus- 
ingt  helpful,  sound,  and  stimulating.  —  The  Bellman. 

Mr.  Phelps  is  at  his  best  in  his  essay  on  Hardy.  —  London 
Times. 

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BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Essays  on  Russian  Novelists 

Cloth     Illustrated    ismo    Price,  $f.JO  net    Post  paid,  $1.60 

Professor  Phelps  follows  closely  the  style  of  his  recent  success- 
ful work,  "  Essays  on  Modern  Novelists."  He  discusses  the 
Russians  with  absolute  frankness,  pointing  out  their  defects 
and  their  merits.  Besides  the  great  authors,  Pushkin,  Gogol, 
Turgenev,  Dostoevski,  and  Tolstoi,  short  chapters  deal  with 
contemporaries,  —  Andreev,  Gorki,  Chekhov,  Artsybashev, 
Kuprin.  A  complete  list  with  dates  of  all  the  writings  of  these 
men,  with  the  translations,  is  included  in  the  volume,  making 
it  invaluable  for  reference.  "  Russian  literature  is  the  voice 
of  a  giant,  waking  from  a  long  sleep,  and  becoming  articulate." 

The  author  of  "  Essays  on  Russian  Novelists  "  gives  such  evi- 
dence of  a  real  grasp  of  the  Russian  character  that  he  must  be 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  love  and  sympathy  which  he  ascribes 
to  Russians.  .  .  .  The  book  is  written  in  a  fluent  style,  the 
interest  never  flags,  and  it  contains  much  excellent  material. 

—  London  Athenautn. 

Prof.  William  Lyon  Phelps  von  Harvard  hat  einen  Bond 
"Essays  on  Russian  Novelists"  veroffentlicht,  der  nicht  nur 
von  griindlichen  Studien,  sondern  von  selternem  verstandnis 
Kunde  gibt.  —  Das  Litterarische  Echo,  Berlin. 

During  the  course  of  these  studies  Professor  Phelps  places  and 
holds  his  ringer  upon  the  pulsating  force  of  Russian  fiction,  its 
deep  and  intense  gloom.  To  each  of  the  great  story-tellers 
Professor  Phelps  gives  an  essay  that  has  the  dominant  virtue 
of  clearness,  and  no  small  measure  of  analytic  power.  —  Boston 
Transcript. 

In  his  broad  portraiture  of  the  disclosure  of  the  Russian  genius 
in  the  field  of  art  in  which  it  has  made  great  achievements, 
Mr.  Phelps  has  written  a  book  of  authoritative  racial  interpre- 
tation. —  The  Outlook. 

II  est  toujours  interessant  pour  les  cercles  intellectuels  d'un 
pays  de  lire  un  jugement  sur  leur  litterature,  exprime  par  un 
critique  etranger,  intelligent  et  erudit.  Le  cas  se  presente 
avec  le  petit  volume  intitule  "  Essays  on  Russian  Novelists." 
Le  volume  commence  par  une  etude  generate  .  .  .  etude  pleine 
d'observations  fines  et  d'idees  neuves.  —  Mercure  de  France. 


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BY   ERNEST   NORTON    HENDERSON,    PH.D. 

Professor  of  Education  and  Philosophy  in  Adelphi  College,  Brooklyn,  N.Y. 

The  Principles  of  Education 

Cloth    izmo    $1.75  net 

The  editor  of  one  of  the  best-known  journals  of  education  is  urging 
that  the  instructors  in  training  schools  make  the  work  a  required 
text  for  all  students  and  training  teachers.  Others  rank  the  book  as 
one  of  the  first  three  essentials  for  a  teacher's  library. 


BY   WILLIAM    CHANDLER    BAGLEY 

Classroom  Management : 
Its  Principles  and  Technique 

Cloth    xvii-\- 332  pages    $1.2 5  net 

This  book  considers  the  problems  that  are  consequent  upon  the 
massing  of  children  together  for  purposes  of  instruction  and  train- 
ing. It  aims  to  discover  how  the  unit-group  of  the  school  system 
—  "  the  class  "  —  can  be  most  effectively  handled.  The  topics  com- 
monly included  in  treatises  upon  school  management  receive  ade- 
quate attention ;  the  first  day  of  school ;  the  mechanizing  of  routine; 
the  daily  programme ;  discipline  and  punishment ;  absence  and 
tardiness,  etc.  In  addition  to  these,  however,  a  number  of  subjects 
hitherto  neglected  in  books  of  this  class  are  presented ;  a  new  treat- 
ment of  incentives  based  upon  modern  psychology,  and  a  formula- 
tion of  the  generally  accepted  principles  of  professional  ethics  as 
applied  to  schoolcraft. 

The  Educative  Process 

Cloth    xix  +  358  pages    $1.25  net 

The  book  aims  to  prevent  a  waste  of  energy  on  the  part  of  the  young 
teacher  by  setting  forth  a  systematic  and  comprehensive  view  of  the 
task  that  is  to  be  accomplished  by  the  school,  with  the  working 
principles  for  the  attainment  of  the  end. 


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A  Cyclopedia  of  Education 

EDITED  BY   PAUL    MONROE,    PH.D. 

Professor  of  the  History  of  Education,  Teachers  College,  Columbia 
University 

To  be  completed  in  five  volumes  Sold  only  by  subscription 

Price,  $5. 00  per  volume 


PRESS  OPINIONS  OF  VOLUME  J 

"Marks  the  dawning  of  a  new  educational  epoch  in  this 
country."  —  Independent. 

"  A  set  of  books  for  the  scholar,  but  not  less  to  every  owner 
of  even  a  small  library.  Similar  cyclopedias  have  existed  in 
other  languages,  but  none  heretofore  in  English." — Standard. 

"  A  just  distribution  of  emphasis ;  an  educational  treatment 
of  every  topic  (especially  noticeable  in  the  biographies),  and 
a  freshness  and  up-to-date  character  not  likely  to  be  found  in 
new  editions  of  old  cyclopedias." — Academy  of  Political  and 
Social  Science, 

"A  pioneer  in  its  field."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

"  A  plentitude  of  titles  that  needs  must  prove  satisfactory 
to  either  student  or  the  occasional  seeker  after  an  educational 
fact  .  .  .  ;  a  clarity  of  expression  and  a  sufficient  fullness  of 
treatment  that  enables  one  to  get  quickly  at  the  gist  of  an 
article. "  —  Educator. 


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A  Brief  Course  in  the  Teaching  Process 

BY  GEORGE   DRAYTON   STRAYER 

Professor  of  Educational  Administration,  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University 
Cloth    ismo    xiv  +  31 5  pages    $1.2 5  net 

This  new  book  by  Professor  Strayer  meets  the  great  and  very  real 
need  for  a  teacher's  professional  book  of  "Theory  and  Practice," 
which  though  full  of  meat,  can  be  read  in  those  "  marginal  minutes  " 
which  are  all  that  a  very  large  number  of  teachers  have  for  reading. 

Professor  Strayer  has  had  in  mind  not  so  much  the  specialist  as 

(1)  the  young  teacher,  who  needs  to  get  much  help  in  a  short  time ; 

(2)  the  teacher  with  limited  training  to  whom  every  schoolroom 
problem  is  mountainous;  and    (3)   the  overworked  teacher  who 
desires  to  keep  abreast  of  the  world  in  her  profession,  but  has  not 
time  to  wade  through  morasses  of  display  stock  of  pedagogical 
"wisdom." 

For  example :  The  chapter  on  "  Study  "  offers  more  in  a  few  pages 
than  some  entire  books  of  hundreds  of  pages  devoted  to  the  topic. 

The  ever  troublesome  questions  of  inductive  and  deductive  teaching 
are  made  as  clear  as  crystal  in  two  brief  chapters.  Teachers  who 
have  studied  whole  books  on  these  topics  only  to  be  befogged  will 
be  surprised  at  their  simplicity  as  given  here. 


The  Learning  Process 


BY  STEPHEN   SHELDON    COLVIN,    PH.D. 

Professor  of  Psychology  at  the  University  of  Illinois 

Cloth    i2mo    xxv  +  336  pages    $1.23 

In  the  multitude  of  books  on  psychology  here  is  at  last  one  that 
meets  the  teacher's  needs ;  truly  a  rara  avis  among  books. 

It  is  not  sensational,  and  it  does  not  make  large  claims  to  originality, 
but  it  is  scholarly.  It  gives  the  latest  contributions  to  the  subject, 
and  in  so  far  as  is  possible  in  a  book,  aids  the  teacher  by  making 
clear  the  processes  of  the  learning  mind,  and  showing  how  to  take 
advantage  of  them. 


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